IffiH 


y 


THE  LIBRARY 

OF 

THE  UNIVERSITY 
OF  CALIFORNIA 


BEQUEST  OF 

Mrs.  Marion  Randall  Parsons 


ESSAYS 


BY 


RALPH  WALDO  EMERSON 


FIRST  AND   SECOND   SERIES 


TWO  VOLUMES   IN  ONE 


BOSTON    AND    NEW    YORK 
HOUGHTON,  MIFFLIN   AND   COMPANY 
(3Tk  ftitoertfiftc  IDvcss, 


Copyright,  1865  and  1876, 
BT  IICKNOR  &  FIELDS  AND  RALPH  WALDO  EMERSON 

Copyright,  1883, 
BY  EDWARD  W.  EMERSON. 

All  rights  reserved. 


Add'l 

.r  .i> 

GIFT 


The  Riverside  Press,  Cambridge,  Mass  ,  U.  S.  A. 
Electrotyped  and  Printed  by  11.  0.  Houghton  &  Company: 


ESSAYS 

FIRST  SERIES 


M823774 


CONTENTS. 


PAGE 

I.  HISTORY 7 

II.  SELF-RELIANCE      ...        e        ...  45 

III.  COMPENSATION           . 89 

IV.  SPIRITUAL  LAWS .  123 

V.  LOVE 159 

VI.  FRIENDSHIP 181 

VII.  PRUDENCE 207 

VIII.  HEROISM 231 

IX.  THE  OVER-SOUL  .  249 

X.  CIRCLES 279 

XI.  INTELLECT .301 

XII.  ART.  .  32? 


HISTORY. 


THERE  is  no  great  and  no  small 
To  the  Soul  that  maketh  all  : 
And  where  it  cometh,  all  things  are  ; 
And  it  cometh  everywhere. 


I  am  owner  of  the  sphere, 

Of  the  seven  stars  and  the  solar  year, 

Of  Caesar's  hand,  and  Plato's  brain, 

Of  Lord  Christ's  heart,  and  Shakspeare's  Btrain, 


HISTORY. 


THERE  is  one  mind  common  to  all  individual 
men.  Every  man  is  an  inlet  to  the  same  and  to  all 
of  the  same.  He  that  is  once  admitted  to  the  right 
of  reason  is  made  a  freeman  of  the  whole  estate. 
What  Plato  has  thought,  he  may  think ;  what  a 
saint  has  felt,  he  may  feel ;  what  at  any  time  has 
befallen  any  man,  he  can  understand.  Who  hath 
access  to  this  universal  mind  is  a  party  to  all  that 
is  or  can  be  done,  for  this  is  the  only  and  sovereign 
agent. 

Of  the  works  of  this  mind  history  is  the  record. 
Its  genius  is  illustrated  by  the  entire  series  of  days. 
Man  is  explicable  by  nothing  less  than  all  his  his 
tory.  Without  hurry,  without  rest,  the  human 
spirit  goes  forth  from  the  beginning  to  embody 
every  faculty,  every  thought,  every  emotion  which 
belongs  to  it,  in  appropriate  events.  But  the  thought 
is  always  prior  to  the  fact ;  all  the  facts  of  history 
preexist  in  the  mind  as  laws.  Each  law  in  turn  is 
made  by  circumstances  predominant,  and  the  limits 


10  HISTORY. 

of  nature  give  power  to  but  one  at  a  time.  A  man 
is  the  whole  encyclopaedia  of  facts.  The  creation 
of  a  thousand  forests  is  in  one  acorn,  and  Egypt, 
Greece,  Rome,  Gaul,  Britain,  America,  lie  folded 
already  in  the  first  man.  Epoch  after  epoch,  camp, 
kingdom,  empire,  republic,  democracy,  are  merely 
the  application  of  his  manifold  spirit  to  the  man 
ifold  world. 

This  human  mind  wrote  history,  and  this  must 
read  it.  The  Sphinx  must  solve  her  own  riddle. 
If  the  whole  of  history  is  in  one  man,  it  is  all  to  be 
explained  from  individual  experience.  There  is  a 
relation  between  the  hours  of  our  life  and  the  cen 
turies  of  time.  As  the  air  I  breathe  is  drawn 
from  the  great  repositories  of  nature,  as  the  light 
on  my  book  is  yielded  by  a  star  a  hundred  millions 
of  miles  distant,  as  the  poise  of  my  body  depends 
on  the  equilibrium  of  centrifugal  and  centripetal 
forces,  so  the  hours  should  be  instructed  by  the  ages 
and  the  ages  explained  by  the  hours.  Of  the  univer 
sal  mind  each  individual  man  is  one  more  incar 
nation.  All  its  properties  consist  in  him.  Each 
new  fact  in  his  private  experience  flashes  a  light  on 
what  great  bodies  of  men  have  done,  and  the  crises 
of  his  life  refer  to  national  crises.  Every  revolution 
was  first  a  thought  in  one  man's  mind,  and  when 
the  same  thought  occurs  to  another  man,  it  is  the 
key  to  that  era.  Every  reform  was  once  a  private 


HISTORY.  11 

opinion,  and  when  it  shall  be  a  private  opinion 
again  it  will  solve  the  problem  of  the  age.  The 
fact  narrated  must  correspond  to  something  in  me 
to  be  credible  or  intelligible.  We,  as  we  read? 
must  become  Greeks,  Romans,  Turks,  priest  and 
king,  martyr  and  executioner ;  must  fasten  these 
images  to  some  reality  in  our  secret  experience,  or 
we  shall  learn  nothing  rightly.  What  befell  As- 
drubal  or  Ca3sar  Borgia  is  as  much  an  illustration 
of  the  mind's  powers  and  depravations  as  what  has 
befallen  us.  Each  new  law  and  political  movement 
has  meaning  for  you.  Stand  before  each  of  its  tab 
lets  and  say,  '  Under  this  mask  did  my  Proteus  na 
ture  hide  itself.'  This  remedies  the  defect  of  our 
too  great  nearness  to  ourselves.  This  throws  our 
actions  into  perspective  ;  and  as  crabs,  goats,  scor 
pions,  the  balance  and  the  waterpot  lose  their  mean 
ness  when  hung  as  signs  in  the  zodiac,  so  I  can  see 
my  own  vices  without  heat  in  the  distant  persons  of 
Solomon,  Alcibiades,  and  Catiline. 

It  is  the  universal  nature  which  gives  worth  to 
particular  men  and  things.  Human  life,  as  con 
taining  this,  is  mysterious  and  inviolable,  and  we 
hedge  it  round  with  penalties  and  laws.  All  laws 
derive  hence  their  ultimate  reason ;  all  express  more 
or  less  distinctly  some  command  of  this  supreme,  il 
limitable  essence.  Property  also  holds  of  the  soul, 
covers  great  spiritual  facts,  and  instinctively  we  at 


12  HISTORY. 

first  hold  to  it  with  swords  and  laws  and  wide  and 
complex  combinations.  The  obscure  consciousness 
of  this  fact  is  the  light  of  all  our  day,  the  claim  of 
claims  ;  the  plea  for  education,  for  justice,  for  char 
ity  ;  the  foundation  of  friendship  and  love  and  of 
the  heroism  and  grandeur  which  belong  to  acts  of 
self-reliance.  It  is  remarkable  that  involuntarily 
we  always  read  as  superior  beings.  Universal  his 
tory,  the  poets,  the  romancers,  do  not  in  their  state- 
liest  pictures,  —  in  the  sacerdotal,  the  imperial 
palaces,  in  the  triumphs  of  will  or  of  genius,  — 
anywhere  lose  our  ear,  anywhere  make  us  feel  that 
we  intrude,  that  this  is  for  better  men  ;  but  rather 
is  it  true  that  in  their  grandest  strokes  we  feel  most 
at  home.  All  that  Shakspeare  says  of  the  king, 
yonder  slip  of  a  boy  that  reads  in  the  corner  feels 
to  be  true  of  himself.  We  sympathize  in  the  great 
moments  of  history,  in  the  great  discoveries,  the 
great  resistances,  the  great  prosperities  of  men ;  — 
because  there  law  was  enacted,  the  sea  was  searched, 
the  land  was  found,  or  the  blow  was  struck,  for  us, 
as  we  ourselves  in  that  place  would  have  done  or 
applauded. 

We  have  the  same  interest  in  condition  and  char 
acter.  We  honor  the  rich  because  they  have  exter 
nally  the  freedom,  power,  and  grace  which  we  feel 
to  be  proper  to  man,  proper  to  us.  So  all  that  is 
Baid  of  the  wise  man  by  Stoic  or  Oriental  or  modern 


HISTORY.  13 

essayist,  describes  to  each  reader  his  own  idea,  de 
scribes  his  unattained  but  attainable  self.  All  lit 
erature  writes  the  character  of  the  wise  man.  Books, 
monuments,  pictures,  conversation,  are  portraits  in 
which  he  finds  the  lineaments  he  is  forming.  The 
silent  and  the  eloquent  praise  him  and  accost  him, 
and  he  is  stimulated  wherever  ho  moves,  as  by  per 
sonal  allusions.  A  true  aspirant  therefore  never 
needs  look  for  allusions  personal  and  laudatory  in 
discourse.  He  hears  the  commendation,  not  of  him 
self,  but,  more  sweet,  of  that  character  he  seeks,  in 
every  word  that  is  said  concerning  character,  yea 
further  in  every  fact  and  circumstance,  —  in  the 
running  river  and  the  rustling  corn.  Praise  is 
looked,  homage  tendered,  love  flows,  from  mute  na 
ture,  from  the  mountains  and  the  lights  of  the  fir 
mament. 

These  hints,  dropped  as  it  were  from  sleep  and 
night,  let  us  use  in  broad  day.  The  student  is  to 
read  history^  actively  and  not  passively ;  to  esteem 
his  own  life  the  text,  and  books  the  commentary.  f 
Thus  compelled,  the  Muse  of  history  will  utter  ora 
cles,  as  never  to  those  who  do  not  respect  them 
selves.  I  have  no  expectation  that  any  man  will 
read  history  aright  who  thinks  that  what  was  done 
in  a  remote  age,  by  men  whose  names  have  re 
sounded  far,  has  any  deeper  sense  than  what  he  is  X 
doing  to-day. 


14  HISTORY. 

The  world  exists  for  the  education  of  each  man. 
There  is  no  age  or  state  of  society  or  mode  of  ac 
tion  in  history  to  which  there  is  not  somewhat  cor 
responding  in  his  life.  Every  thing  tends  in  a 
wonderful  manner  to  abbreviate  itself  and  yield  its 
own  virtue  to  him.  He  should  see  that  he  can  live 
all  history  in  his  own  person.  He  must  sit  solidly 
at  home,  and  not  suffer  himself  to  be  bullied  by 
kings  or  empires,  but  know  that  he  is  greater  than  all 
the  geography  and  all  the  government  of  the  world ; 
he  must  transfer  the  point  of  view  from  which  his 
tory  is  commonly  read,  from  Rome  and  Athens  and 
London,  to  himself,  and  not  deny  his  conviction 
that  he  is  the  court,  and  if  England  or  Egypt 
have  any  thing  to  say  to  him  he  will  try  the  case  ; 
if  not,  let  them  forever  be  silent.  He  must  attain 
and  maintain  that  lofty  sight  where  facts  yield 
their  secret  sense,  and  poetry  and  annals  are  alike. 
The  instinct  of  the  mind,  the  purpose  of  nature,  be 
trays  itself  in  the  use  we  make  of  the  signal  narra 
tions  of  history.  Time  dissipates  to  shining  ether 
the  solid  angularity  of  facts.  No  anchor,  no  cable, 
no  fences  avail  to  keep  a  fact  a  fact.  Babylon, 
Troy,  Tyre,  Palestine,  and  even  early  Rome  are 
passing  already  into  fiction.  The  Garden  of  Eden, 
the  sun  standing  still  in  Gibeon,  is  poetry  thence 
forward  to  all  nations.  Who  cares  what  the  fact 
was,  when  we  have  made  a  constellation  of  it  to 


HISTORY.  15 

hang  in  heaven  an  immortal  sign  ?  London  and 
Paris  and  New  York  must  go  the  same  way. 
"  What  is  history,"  said  Napoleon,  "  but  a  fable 
agreed  upon  ?  "  This  life  of  ours  is  stuck  round 
with  Egypt,  Greece,  Gaul,  England,  War,  Coloni 
zation,  Church,  Court  and  Commerce,  as  with  so 
many  flowers  and  wild  ornaments  grave  and  gay. 
I  will  not  make  more  account  of  them.  I  believe 
in  Eternity.  I  can  find  Greece,  Asia,  Italy,  Spain 
and  the  Islands,  —  the  genius  and  creative  princi 
ple  of  each  and  of  all  eras,  in  my  own  mind. 

We  are  always  coming  up  with  the  emphatic 
facts  of  history  in  our  private  experience  and 
verifying  them  here.  All  history  becomes  subjec 
tive  ;  in  other  words  there  is  properly  no  history, 
only  biography.  Every  mind  must  know  the  whole 
lesson  for  itself,  —  must  go  over  the  whole  ground. 
What  it  does  not  see,  what  it  does  not  live,  it  will 
not  know.  What  the  former  age  has  epitomized 
into  a  formula  or  rule  for  manipular  convenience, 
it  will  lose  all  the  good  of  verifying  for  itself,  by 
means  of  the  wall  of  that  rule.  Somewhere,  some 
time,  it  will  demand  and  find  compensation  for 
that  loss,  by  doing  the  work  itself.  Ferguson  dis 
covered  many  things  in  astronomy  which  had  long 
been  known.  The  better  for  him. 

History  must  be  this  or  it  is  nothing.  Every  law 
which  the  state  enacts  indicates  a  fact  in  human 


16  HISTORY. 

nature  ;  that  is  all.  We  must  in  ourselves  see  the 
necessary  reason  of  every  fact,  —  see  how  it  could 
and  must  be.  So  stand  before  every  public  and 
private  work  ;  before  an  oration  of  Burke,  before  a 
victory  of  Napoleon,  before  a  martyrdom  of  Sir 
Thomas  More,  of  Sidney,  of  Marmaduke  Robin 
son  ;  before  a  French  Reign  of  Terror,  and  a  Salem 
hanging  of  witches  ;  before  a  fanatic  Revival  and 
the  Animal  Magnetism  in  Paris,  or  in  Providence. 
We  assume  that  we  under  like  influence  should  be 
alike  affected,  and  should  achieve  the  like ;  and  we 
aim  to  master  intellectually  the  steps  and  reach 
the  same  height  or  the  same  degradation  that  our 
fellow,  our  proxy  has  done. 

All  inquiry  into  antiquity,  all  curiosity  respect 
ing  the  Pyramids,  the  excavated  cities,  Stonehenge, 
the  Ohio  Circles,  Mexico,  Memphis,  —  is  the  de 
sire  to  do  away  this  wild,  savage,  and  preposterous 
There  or  Then,  and  introduce  in  its  place  the  Here 
and  the  Now.  Belzoni  digs  and  measures  in  the 
mummy-pits  and  pyramids  of  Thebes  until  he  can 
see  the  end  of  the  difference  between  the  monstrous 
work  and  himself.  When  he  has  satisfied  himself, 
in  general  and  in  detail,  that  it  was  made  by  such 
a  person  as  he,  so  armed  and  so  motived,  and  to 
ends  to  which  he  himself  should  also  have  worked 
the  problem  is  solved ;  his  thought  lives  along  the 
whole  line  of  temples  and  sphinxes  and  catacombs, 


HISTORY.  17 

passes  through  them  all  with  satisfaction,  and  they 
live  again  to  the  mind,  or  are  now.  { 

A  Gothic  cathedral  affirms  that  it  was  done  by 
us  and  not  done  by  us.  Surely  it  was  by  man,  but 
we  find  it  not  in  our  man.  But  we  apply  ourselves 
to  the  history  of  its  production.  We  put  ourselves 
into  the  place  and  state  of  the  builder.  We  re 
member  the  forest-dwellers,  the  first  temples,  the 
adherence  to  the  first  type,  and  the  decoration  of  it 
as  the  wealth  of  the  nation  increased ;  the  value 
which  is  given  to  wood  by  carving  led  to  the  carv 
ing  over  the  whole  mountain  of  stone  of  a  cathe 
dral.  When  we  have  gone  through  this  process, 
and  added  thereto  the  Catholic  Church,  its  cross, 
its  music,  its  processions,  its  Saints'  days  and  image- 
worship,  we  have  as  it  were  been  the  man  that 
made  the  minster  ;  we  have  seen  how  it  could  and 
must  be.  We  have  the  sufficient  reason. 

The  difference  between  men  is  in  their  principle 
of  association.  Some  men  classify  objects  by  color 
and  size  and  other  accidents  of  appearance ;  others 
by  intrinsic  likeness,  or  by  the  relation  of  cause 
and  effect.  The  progress  of  the  intellect  is  to  the 
clearer  vision  of  causes,  which  neglects  surface  dif 
ferences.  To  the  poet,  to  the  philosopher,  to  the 
saint,  all  things  are  friendly  and  sacred,  all  events 
profitable,  all  days  holy,  all  men  divine.  For  the 
eye  is  fastened  on  the  life,  and  slights  the  circuni* 

VOL.    II.  2 


18  HISTORY. 

stance.  Every  chemical  substance,  every  plant, 
every  animal  in  its  growth,  teaches  the  unity  of 
cause,  the  variety  of  appearance. 

Upborne  and  surrounded  as  we  are  by  this  all- 
creating  nature,  soft  and  fluid  as  a  cloud  or  the  air, 
why  should  we  be  such  hard  pedants,  and  mag 
nify  a  few  forms  ?  Why  should  we  make  account 
of  time,  or  of  magnitude,  or  of  figure  ?  The  soul 
knows  them  not,  and  genius,  obeying  its  law,  knows 
how  to  play  with  them  as  a  young  child  plays  with 
graybeards  and  in  churches.  Genius  studies  the 
oausal  thought,  and  far  back  in  the  womb  of  things 
sees  the  rays  parting  from  one  orb,  that  diverge, 
ere  they  fall,  by  infinite  diameters.  Genius  watches 
the  monad  through  all  his  masks  as  he  performs 
the  metempsychosis  of  nature.  Genius  detects 
through  the  fly,  through  the  caterpillar,  through 
the  grub,  through  the  egg,  the  constant  individual ; 
through  countless  individuals  the  fixed  species ; 
through  many  species  the  genus ;  through  all  genera 
the  steadfast  type ;  through  all  the  kingdoms  of  or 
ganized  life  the  eternal  unity.  Nature  is  a,  muta 
ble  cloud  which  is  always  and  never  the  same.  She 
casts  the  same  thought  into  troops  of  forms,  as  a 
poet  makes  twenty  fables  with  one  moral.  Through 
the  bruteness  and  toughness  of  matter,  a  subtle 
spirit  bends  all  things  to  its  own  will.  The  ada 
mant  streams  into  soft  but  precise  form  before  it. 


HISTORY.  19 

and  whilst  I  look  at  it  its  outline  and  texture  are 
changed  again.  Nothing  is  so  fleeting  as  form ; 
yet  never  does  it  quite  deny  itself.  In  man  we  still 
trace  the  remains  or  hints  of  all  that  we  esteem 
badges  of  servitude  in  the  lower  races  ;  yet  in  him 
they  enhance  his  nobleness  and  grace ;  as  lo,  in 
^Eschylus,  transformed  to  a  cow,  offends  the  im 
agination  ;  but  how  changed  when  as  Isis  in  Egypt 
she  meets  Osiris-Jove,  a  beautiful  woman  with  noth 
ing  of  the  metamorphosis  left  but  the  lunar  horns 
as  the  splendid  ornament  of  her  brows ! 

The  identity  of  history  is  equally  intrinsic,  the 
diversity  equally  obvious.  There  is,  at  the  surface, 
infinite  variety  of  things  ;  at  the  centre  there  is  sim«- 
plicity  of  cause.  How  many  are  the  acts  of  one 
man  in  which  we  recognize  the  same  character ! 
Observe  the  sources  of  our  information  in  respect 
to  the  Greek  genius.  We  have  the  civil  history  of 
that  people,  as  Herodotus,  Thucydides,  Xenophon, 
and  Plutarch  have  given  it ;  a  very  sufficient  ac 
count  of  what  manner  of  persons  they  were  and 
what  they  did.  We  have  the  same  national  mind 
expressed  for  us  again  in  their  literature,  in  epic 
and  lyric  poems,  drama,  and  philosophy ;  a  very 
complete  form.  Then  we  have  it  once  more  in 
their  architecture,  a  beauty  as  of  temperance  itself, 
limited  to  the  straight  line  and  the  square,  —  a 
builded  geometry.  Then  we  have  it  once  again  in 


20  HISTORY. 

sculpture,  the  "  tongue  on  the  balance  of  expres* 
sion,"  a  multitude  of  forms  in  the  utmost  freedom 
of  action  and  never  transgressing  the  ideal  seren 
ity  ;  like  votaries  performing  some  religious  dance 
before  the  gods,  and,  though  in  convulsive  pain  or 
mortal  combat,  never  daring  to  break  the  figure 
and  decorum  of  their  dance.  Thus  of  the  genius 
of  one  remarkable  people  we  have  a  fourfold  repre 
sentation  :  and  to  the  senses  what  more  unlike  than 
an  ode  of  Pindar,  a  marble  centaur,  the  peristyle 
of  the  Parthenon,  and  the  last  actions  of  Phocion  ? 

Every  one  must  have  observed  faces  and  forms 
which,  without  any  resembling  feature,  make  a  like 
impression  on  the  beholder.  A  particular  picture 
or  copy  of  verses,  if  it  do  not  awaken  the  same 
train  of  images,  will  yet  superinduce  the  same  sen 
timent  as  some  wild  mountain  walk,  although  the 
resemblance  is  nowise  obvious  to  the  senses,  but  is 
occult  and  out  of  the  reach  of  the  understanding. 
Nature  is  an  endless  combination  and  repetition  of 
a  very  few  laws.  She  hums  the  old  well-known  air 
through  innumerable  variations. 

Nature  is  full  of  a  sublime  family  likeness 
throughout  her  works,  and  delights  in  startling  us 
with  resemblances  in  the  most  unexpected  quarters. 
I  have  seen  the  head  of  an  old  sachem  of  the  for 
est  which  at  once  reminded  the  eye  of  a  bald  moun 
tain  summit,  and  the  furrows  of  the  brow  suggested 


HISTORY.  21 

the  strata  of  the  rock.  There  are  men  whose  man 
ners  have  the  same  essential  splendor  as  the  simple 
and  awful  sculpture  on  the  friezes  of  the  Parthenon 
and  the  remains  of  the  earliest  Greek  art.  And 
there  are  compositions  of  the  same  strain  to  be 
found  in  the  books  of  all  ages.  What  is  Guido's 
Rospigliosi  Aurora  but  a  morning  thought,  as  the 
horses  in  it  are  only  a  morning  cloud  ?  If  any  one 
will  but  take  pains  to  observe  the  variety  of  actions 
to  which  he  is  equally  inclined  in  certain  moods  of 
mind,  and  those  to  which  he  is  averse,  he  will  see 
how  deep  is  the  chain  of  affinity. 

A  painter  told  me  that  nobody  could  draw  a  tree 
without  in  some  sort  becoming  a  tree  ;  or  draw  a 
child  by  studying  the  outlines  of  its  form  merely, 
—  but,  by  watching  for  a  time  his  motions  and 
plays,  the  painter  enters  into  his  nature  and  can 
then  draw  him  at  will  in  every  attitude.  So  Roos 
"entered  into  the  inmost  nature  of  a  sheep."  1 
knew  a  draughtsman  employed  in  a  public  survey 
who  found  that  he  could  not  sketch  the  rocks  until 
their  geological  structure  was  first  explained  to 
him.  In  a  certain  state  of  thought  is  the  common 
origin  of  very  diverse  works.  It  is  the  spirit  and 
not  the  fact  that  is  identical.  By  a  deeper  appre 
hension,  and  not  primarily  by  a  painful  acquisition 
of  many  manual  skills,  the  artist  attains  the  power 
of  awakening  other  souls  to  a  given  activity. 


22  HISTORY. 

It  has  been  said  that  "  common  souls  pay  with 
what  they  do,  nobler  souls  with  that  which  they 
are."  And  why  ?  Because  a  profound  nature 
awakens  in  us  by  its  actions  and  words,  by  its  very 
looks  and  manners,  the  same  power  and  beauty 
that  a  gallery  of  sculpture  or  of  pictures  addresses. 

Civil  and  natural  history,  the  history  of  art  and 
of  literature,  must  be  explained  from  individual 
history,  or  must  remain  words.  There  is  nothing 
but  is  related  to  us,  nothing  that  does  not  interest 
us,  —  kingdom,  college,  tree,  horse,  or  iron  shoe,  — 
the  roots  of  all  things  are  in  man.  Santa  Croce 
and  the  Dome  of  St.  Peter's  are  lame  copies  after 
a  divine  model.  Strasburg  Cathedral  is  a  material 
counterpart  of  the  soul  of  Erwin  of  Steinbach. 
The  true  poem  is  the  poet's  mind ;  the  true  ship  is 
the  ship-builder.  In  the  man,  could  we  lay  him 
open,  we  should  see  the  reason  for  the  last  flourish 
and  tendril  of  his  work  ;  as  every  spine  and  tint  in 
the  sea-shell  preexists  in  the  secreting  organs  of  the 
fish.  The  whole  of  heraldry  and  of  chivalry  is  in 
courtesy.  A  man  of  fine  manners  shall  pronounce 
your  name  with  all  the  ornament  that  titles  of  no 
bility  could  ever  add. 

The  trivial  experience  of  every  day  is  always 
verifying  some  old  prediction  to  us  and  converting 
into  things  the  words  and  signs  which  we  had  heard 
and  seen  without  heed.  A  lady  with  wliom  I  was 


HISTORY.  23 

riding  in  the  forest  said  to  me  that  the  woods  al 
ways  seemed  to  her  to  wait,  as  if  the  genii  who  in 
habit  them  suspended  their  deeds  until  the  way 
farer  had  passed  onward ;  a  thought  which  poetry 
has  celebrated  in  the  dance  of  the  fairies,  which 
breaks  off  on  the  approach  of  human  feet.  The 
man  who  has  seen  the  rising  moon  break  out  of  the 
clouds  at  midnight,  has  been  present  like  an  arch 
angel  at  the  creation  of  light  and  of  the  world.  I 
remember  one  summer  day  in  the  fields  my  com 
panion  pointed  ou^  to  me  a  broad  cloud,  which 
might  extend  a  quarter  of  a  mile  parallel  to  the 
horizon,  quite  accurately  in  the  form  of  a  cherub 
as  painted  over  churches,  —  a  round  block  in  the 
centre,  which  it  was  easy  to  animate  with  eyes  and 
mouth,  supported  on  either  side  by  wide-stretched 
symmetrical  wings.  What  appears  once  in  the  at 
mosphere  may  appear  often,  and  it  was  undoubt 
edly  the  archetype  of  that  familiar  ornament.  I 
have  seen  in  the  sky  a  chain  of  summer  lightning 
which  at  once  showed  to  me  that  the  Greeks  drew 
from  nature  when  they  painted  the  thunderbolt  in 
the  hand  of  Jove.  I  have  seen  a  snow-drift  along 
the  sides  of  the  stone  wall  which  obviously  gave 
the  idea  of  the  common  architectural  scroll  to  abut 
a  tower. 

By  surrounding  ourselves  with  the  original  cir 
cumstances  we  invent  anew  the  orders  and  the  or- 


24  m STORY. 

naments  of  architecture,  as  we  see  how  each  peo 
ple  merely  decorated  its  primitive  abodes.  The 
Doric  temple  preserves  the  semblance  of  the  wooden 
cabin  in  which  the  Dorian  dwelt.  The  Chinese 
pagoda  is  plainly  a  Tartar  tent.  The  Indian  and 
Egyptian  temples  still  betray  the  mounds  and  sub 
terranean  houses  of  their  forefathers.  "  The  cus 
tom  of  making  houses  and  tombs  in  the  living 
rock,"  says  Heeren  in  his  Eesearches  on  the  Ethio 
pians,  "  determined  very  naturally  the  principal 
character  of  the  Nubian  Egyptian  architecture  to 
the  colossal  form  which  it  assumed.  In  these  cav 
erns,  already  prepared  by  nature,  the  eye  was  ac 
customed  to  dwell  on  huge  shapes  and  masses,  so 
that  when  art  came  to  the  assistance  of  nature  it 
could  not  move  on  a  small  scale  without  degrading 
itself.  "What  would  statues  of  the  usual  size,  or 
neat  porches  and  wings  have  been,  associated  with 
those  gigantic  halls  before  which  only  Colossi  could 
sit  as  watchmen  or  lean  on  the  pillars  of  the  inte 
rior?" 

The  Gothic  church  plainly  originated  in  a  rude 
adaptation  of  the  forest  trees,  with  all  their  boughs, 
to  a  festal  or  solemn  arcade ;  as  the  bands  about 
the  cleft  pillars  still  indicate  the  green  withes  that 
tied  them.  No  one  can  walk  in  a  road  cut  through 
pine  woods,  without  being  struck  with  the  architec 
tural  appearance  of  the  grove,  especially  in  winter, 


HISTORY.  25 

when  the  barrenness  of  all  other  trees  shows  the 
low  arch  of  the  Saxons.  In  the  woods  in  a  winter 
afternoon  one  will  see  as  readily  the  origin  of  the 
stained  glass  window,  with  which  the  Gothic  cathe 
drals  are  adorned,  in  the  colors  of  the  western  sky 
seen  through  the  bare  and  crossing  branches  of  the 
forest*  Nor  can  any  lover  of  nature  enter  the  old 
piles  of  Oxford  and  the  English  cathedrals,  with 
out  feeling  that  the  forest  overpowered  the  mind  of 
the  builder,  and  that  his  chisel,  his  saw  and  plane 
still  reproduced  its  ferns,  its  spikes  of  flowers,  its 
locust,  elm,  oak,  pine,  fir  and  spruce. 

The  Gothic  cathedral  is  a  blossoming  in  stone 
subdued  by  the  insatiable  demand  of  harmony  in 
man.  The  mountain  of  granite  blooms  into  an 
eternal  flower,  with  the  lightness  and  delicate  finish 
as  well  as  the  aerial  proportions  and  perspective  of 
vegetable  beauty. 

In  like  manner  all  public  facts  are  to  be  indi 
vidualized,  all  private  facts  are  to  be  generalized. 
Then  at  once  History  becomes  fluid  and  true,  and 
Biography  deep  and  sublime.  As  the  Persian  imi 
tated  in  the  slender  shafts  and  capitals  of  his  archi 
tecture  the  stem  and  flower  of  the  lotus  and  palm, 
so  the  Persian  court  in  its  magnificent  era  never 
gave  over  the  nomadism  of  its  barbarous  tribes, 
but  travelled  from  Ecbatana,  where  the  spring  was 
spent,  to  Susa  in  summer  and  to  Babylon  for  the 
winter. 


26  HISTORY. 

In  the  early  history  of  Asia  and  Africa,  Nomad- 
ism  and  Agriculture  are  the  two  antagonist  facts. 
The  geography  of  Asia  and  of  Africa  necessitated 
a  nomadic  life.  But  the  nomads  were  the  terror 
of  all  those  whom  the  soil  or  the  advantages  of  a 
market  had  induced  to  build  towns.  Agriculture 
therefore  was  a  religious  injunction,  because  of  the 
perils  of  the  state  from  nomadism.  And  in  these 
late  and  civil  countries  of  England  and  America 
these  propensities  still  fight  out  the  old  battle,  in 
the  nation  and  in  the  individual.  The  nomads  of 
Africa  were  constrained  to  wander,  by  the  attacks 
of  the  gad-fly,  which  drives  the  cattle  mad,  and  so 
compels  the  tribe  to  emigrate  in  the  rainy  season 
and  to  drive  off  the  cattle  to  the  higher  sandy  re 
gions.  The  nomads  of  Asia  follow  the  pasturage 
from  month  to  month.  In  America  and  Europe 
the  nomadism  is  of  trade  and  curiosity ;  a  progress, 
certainly,  from  the  gad-fly  of  Astaboras  to  the  An 
glo  and  Italo-mariia  of  Boston  Bay.  Sacred  cities, 
to  which  a  periodical  religious  pilgrimage  was  en 
joined,  or  stringent  laws  and  customs  tending  to 
invigorate  the  national  bond,  were  the  check  on  the 
old  rovers  ;  and  the  cumulative  values  of  long  res 
idence  are  the  restraints  on  the  itinerancy  of  the 
present  day.  The  antagonism  of  the  two  tenden 
cies  is  not  less  active  in  individuals,  as  the  love  of 
adventure  or  the  love  of  repose  happens  to  predom- 


HISTORY.  27 

mate.  A  man  of  rude  health  and  flowing  spirits 
has  the  faculty  of  rapid  domestication,  lives  in  his 
wagon  and  roams  through  all  latitudes  as  easily  as 
a  Calmuc.  At  sea,  or  in  the  forest,  or  in  the  snow, 
he  sleeps  as  warm,  dines  with  as  good  appetite, 
and  associates  as  happily  as  beside  his  own  chim 
neys.  Or  perhaps  his  facility  is  deeper  seated,  in 
1;he  increased  range  of  his  faculties  of  observation, 
which  yield  him  points  of  interest  wherever  fresh 
objects  meet  his  eyes.  The  pastoral  nations  were 
needy  and  hungry  to  desperation  ;  and  this  intel 
lectual  nomadism,  in  its  excess,  bankrupts  the  mind 
through  the  dissipation  of  power  on  a  miscellany  of 
objects.  The  home-keeping  wit,  on  the  other  hand, 
is  that  continence  or  content  which  finds  all  the 
elements  of  life  in  its  own  soil ;  and  which  has  its 
own  perils  of  monotony  and  deterioration,  if  not 
stimulated  by  foreign  infusions. 

Every  thing  the  individual  sees  without  him  coiv 
responds  to  his  states  of  mind,  and  every  thing  ia 
in  turn  intelligible  to  him,  as  his  onward  think, 
ing  leads  him  into  the  truth  to  which  that  fact  or 
series  belongs. 

The  primeval  world,  —  the  Fore- World,  as  the 
Germans  say,  —  I  can  dive  to  it  in  myself  as  well 
as  grope  for  it  with  researching  fingers  in  cata 
combs,  libraries,  and  the  broken  reliefs  and  torsos 
of  ruined  villas. 


28  HISTORY. 

What  is  the  foundation  of  that  interest  all  men 
feel  in  Greek  history,  letters,  art  and  poetry,  in  all 
its  periods  from  the  Heroic  or  Homeric  age  down 
to  the  domestic  life  of  the  Athenians  and  Spartans, 
four  or  five  centuries  later  ?  What  but  this,  that 
every  man  passes  personally  through  a  Grecian  pe 
riod.  The  Grecian  state  is  the  era  of  the  bodily 
nature,  the  perfection  of  the  senses,  —  of  the  spirit 
ual  nature  unfolded  in  strict  unity  with  the  body. 
In  it  existed  those  human  forms  which  supplied  the 
sculptor  with  his  models  of  Hercules,  Phcebus,  and 
Jove  ;  not  like  the  forms  abounding  in  the  streets 
of  modern  cities,  wherein  the  face  is  a  confused 
blur  of  features,  but  composed  of  incorrupt,  sharply 
defined  and  symmetrical  features,  whose  eye-sock 
ets  are  so  formed  that  it  would  be  impossible  for 
such  eyes  to  squint  and  take  furtive  glances  on 
this  side  and  on  that,  but  they  must  turn  the  whole 
head.  The  manners  of  that  period  are  plain  and 
fierce.  The  reverence  exhibited  is  for  personal 
qualities ;  courage,  address,  self-command,  justice, 
strength,  swiftness,  a  loud  voice,  a  broad  chest. 
Luxury  and  elegance  are  not  known.  A  sparse 
population  and  want  make  every  man  his  own  valet, 
cook,  butcher  and  soldier,  and  the  habit  of  supply 
ing  his  own  needs  educates  the  body  to  wonderful 
performances.  Such  are  the  Agamemnon  and 
Diomed  of  Homer,  and  not  far  different  is  the  pio 


HISTORY.  29 

ture  Xenophou  gives  of  himself  and  his  compatri 
ots  in  the  Retreat  of  the  Ten  Thousand.  "  After 
the  army  had  crossed  the  river  Teleboas  in  Arme 
nia,  there  fell  much  snow,  and  the  troops  lay  mis~ 
erably  on  the  ground  covered  with  it.  But  Xeno- 
phon  arose  naked,  and  taking  an  axe,  began  to  split 
wood ;  whereupon  others  rose  and  did  the  like." 
Throughout  his  army  exists  a  boundless  liberty  of 
speech.  They  quarrel  for  plunder,  they  wrangle 
with  the  generals  on  each  new  order,  and  Xenophon 
is  as  sharp-tongued  as  any  and  sharper-tongued 
than  most,  and  so  gives  as  good  as  he  gets.  Who 
does  not  see  that  this  is  a  gang  of  great  boys,  with 
such  a  code  of  honor  and  such  lax  discipline  as 
great  boys  have  ? 

The  costly  charm  of  the  ancient  tragedy,  and  in 
deed  of  all  the  old  literature,  is  that  the  persons 
speak  simply,  —  speak  as  persons  who  have  great- 
good  sense  without  knowing  it,  before  yet  the  re 
flective  habit  has  become  the  predominant  habit  of 
the  mind.  Our  admiration  of  the  antique  is  not 
admiration  of  the  old,  but  of  the  natural.  The 
Greeks  are  not  reflective,  but  perfect  in  their  senses 
and  in  their  health,  with  the  finest  physical  organ 
ization  in  the  world.  Adults  acted  with  the  sim 
plicity  and  grace  of  children.  They  made  vases, 
tragedies  and  statues,  such  as  healthy  senses  should, 
—  that  is,  in  good  taste.  Such  things  have  con- 


80  HISTORY. 

tinned  to  be  made  in  all  ages,  and  are  now,  wher 
ever  a  healthy  physique  exists ;  but,  as  a  class,  from 
their  superior  organization,  they  have  surpassed  all. 
They  combine  the  energy  of  manhood  with  the  en 
gaging  unconsciousness  of  childhood.  The  attrac 
tion  of  these  manners  is  that  they  belong  to  man, 
and  are  known  to  every  man  in  virtue  of  his  being 
once  a  child ;  besides  that  there  are  always  individ 
uals  who  retain  these  characteristics.  A  person  of 
childlike  genius  and  inborn  energy  is  still  a  Greek, 
and  revives  our  love  of  the  Muse  of  Hellas.  I  ad 
mire  the  love  of  nature  in  the  Philoctetes.  In  read 
ing  those  fine  apostrophes  to  sleep,  to  the  stars, 
rocks,  mountains  and  waves,  I  feel  time  passing 
away  as  an  ebbing  sea.  I  feel  the  eternity  of  man, 
the  identity  of  his  thought.  The  Greek  had  it 
seems  the  same  fellow-beings  as  I.  The  sun  and 
moon,  water  and  fire,  met  his  heart  precisely  as 
they  meet  mine.  Then  the  vaunted  distinction  be 
tween  Greek  and  English,  between  Classic  and  Ro 
mantic  schools,  seems  superficial  and  pedantic. 
When  a  thought  of  Plato  becomes  a  thought  to  me, 
—  when  a  truth  that  fired  the  soul  of  Pindar  fires 
mine,  time  is  no  more.  When  I  feel  that  we  two 
meet  in  a  perception,  that  our  two  souls  are  tinged 
with  the  same  hue,  and  do  as  it  were  run  into  one, 
why  should  I  measure  degrees  of  latitude,  why 
should  I  count  Egyptian  years  ? 


HISTORY.  31 

The  student  interprets  the  age  of  chivalry  by 
his  own  age  of  chivalry,  and  the  days  of  maritime 
adventure  and  circumnavigation  by  quite  parallel 
miniature  experiences  of  his  own.  To  the  sacred 
history  of  the  world  he  has  the  same  key.  When 
the  voice  of  a  prophet  out  of  the  deeps  of  antiquity 
merely  echoes  to  him  a  sentiment  of  his  infancy,  a 
prayer  of  his  youth,  he  then  pierces  to  the  truth 
through  all  the  confusion  of  tradition  and  the  car 
icature  of  institutions. 

Rare,  extravagant  spirits  come  by  us  at  intervals, 
who  disclose  to  us  new  facts  in  nature.  I  see  that 
men  of  God  have  from  time  to  time  walked  among 
men  and  made  their  commission  felt  in  the  heart 
and  soul  of  the  commonest  hearer.  Hence  evi 
dently  the  tripod,  the  priest,  the  priestess  inspired 
by  the  divine  afflatus. 

Jesus  astonishes  and  overpowers  sensuaJ  people. 
They  cannot  unite  him  to  history,  or  reconcile  him 
with  themselves.  As  they  come  to  revere  their  in 
tuitions  and  aspire  to  live  holily,  their  own  piety 
explains  every  fact,  every  word. 

How  easily  these  old  worships  of  Moses,  of  Zo 
roaster,  of  Menu,  of  Socrates,  domesticate  them 
selves  in  the  mind.  I  cannot  find  any  antiquity  in 
them.  They  are  mine  as  much  as  theirs. 

I  have  seen  the  first  monks  and  anchorets,  with 
out  crossing  seas  or  centuries.  More  than  once 


32  HISTORY. 

some  individual  has  appeared  to  me  with  such  neg 
ligence  of  labor  and  such  commanding  contempla 
tion,  a  haughty  beneficiary  begging  in  the  name 
of  God,  as  made  good  to  the  nineteenth  century 
Simeon  the  Stylite,  the  Thebais,  and  the  first  Ca 
puchins. 

The  priestcraft  of  the  East  and  West,  of  the 
Magian,  Brahmin,  Druid,  and  Inca,  is  expounded  in 
the  individual's  private  life.  The  cramping  influ 
ence  of  a  hard  formalist  on  a  young  child,  in  re 
pressing  his  spirits  and  courage,  paralyzing  the  un 
derstanding,  and  that  without  producing  indigna 
tion,  but  only  fear  and  obedience,  and  even  much 
sympathy  with  the  tyranny,  —  is  a  familiar  fact,  ex 
plained  to  the  child  when  he  becomes  a  man,  only 
by  seeing  that  the  oppressor  of  his  youth  is  himself 
a  child  tyrannized  over  by  those  names  and  words 
and  forms  of  whose  influence  he  was  merely  the  or 
gan  to  the  youth.  The  fact  teaches  him  how  Belus 
was  worshipped  and  how  the  Pyramids  were  built, 
better  than  the  discovery  by  Champollion  of  the 
names  of  all  the  workmen  and  the  cost  of  every 
tile.  He  finds  Assyria  and  the  Mounds  of  Cholula 
at  his  door,  and  himself  has  laid  the  courses. 

Again,  in  that  protest  which  each  considerate 
person  makes  against  the  superstition  of  his  times, 
he  repeats  step  for  step  the  part  of  old  reformers, 
and  in  the  search  after  truth  finds,  like  them,  new 


HISTORY.  33 

perils  to  virtue.  He  learns  again  what  moral  vigor 
is  needed  to  supply  the  girdle  of  a  superstition. 
A  great  licentiousness  treads  on  the  heels  of  a  ref 
ormation.  How  many  times  in  the  history  of  the 
world  has  the  Luther  of  the  day  had  to  lament  the 
decay  of  piety  in  his  own  household !  "  Doctor,"1 
said  his  wife  to  Martin  Luther,  one  day,  "  how  is 
it  that  whilst  subject  to  papacy  we  prayed  so  often 
and  with  such  fervor,  whilst  now  we  pray  with  the 
utmost  coldness  and  very  seldom  ?  " 

The  advancing  man  discovers  how  deep  a  prop 
erty  he  has  in  literature,  —  in  all  fable  as  well  as  in 
all  history.  He  finds  that  the  poet  was  no  odd  fel 
low  who  described  strange  and  impossible  situations, 
but  that  universal  man  wrote  by  his  pen  a  confes 
sion  true  for  one  and  true  for  all.  His  own  secret 
biography  he  finds  in  lines  wonderfully  intelligi 
ble  to  him,  dotted  down  before  he  was  born.  One 
after  another  he  comes  up  in  his  private  adventures 
with  every  fable  c ":  JEsop,  of  Homer,  of  Hafiz,  of 
Ariosto,  of  Chaucer,  of  Scott,  and  verifies  them 
with  his  own  head  and  hands. 

The  beautiful  fables  of  the  Greeks,  being  proper 
creations  of  the  imagination  and  not  of  the  fancy, 
are  universal  verities.  What  a  range  of  meanings 
and  what  perpetual  pertinence  has  the  story  of  Pro 
metheus!  Beside  its  primary  value  as  the  first 
chapter  of  the  history  of  Europe,  (the  mythology 


VOL   II. 


34  HISTORY. 

thinly  veiling  authentic  facts,  the  invention  of  the 
mechanic  arts  and  the  migration  of  colonies,)  it  gives 
the  history  of  religion,  with  some  closeness  to  the 
faith  of  later  ages.  Prometheus  is  the  Jesus  of  the 
old  mythology.  He  is  the  friend  of  man ;  stands 
between  the  unjust  "  justice  "  of  the  Eternal  Father 
and  the  race  of  mortals,  and  readily  suffers  all 
things  on  their  account.  But  where  it  departs  from 
the  Calvinistic  Christianity  and  exhibits  him  as  the 
defier  of  Jove,  it  represents  a  state  of  mind  which 
readily  appears  wherever  the  doctrine  of  Theism  is 
taught  in  a  crude,  objective  form,  and  which  seems 
the  self-defence  of  man  against  this  untruth,  namely 
a  discontent  with  the  believed  fact  that  a  God  ex- 
ists,  and  a  feeling  that  the  obligation  of  reverence 
is  onerous.  It  would  steal  if  it  could  the  fire  of  the 
Creator,  and  live  apart  from  him  and  independent 
of  him.  The  Prometheus  Vinctus  is  the  romance 
of  skepticism.  Not  less  true  to  all  time  are  the 
details  of  that  stately  apologue.  Apollo  kept  the 
flocks  of  Admetus,  said  the  poets.  When  the  gods 
come  among  men,  they  are  not  known.  Jesus  was 
not ;  Socrates  and  Shakspeare  were  not.  Anta3us 
was  suffocafed  by  the  gripe  of  Hercules,  but  every 
time  he  touched  his  mother  earth  his  strength  was 
renewed.  Man  is  the  broken  giant,  and  in  all  his 
weakness  both  his  body  and  his  mind  are  invig 
orated  by  habits  of  conversation  with  nature.  The 


HISTORY.  35 

power  of  music,  the  power  of  poetry,  to  unfix  and 
as  it  were  clap  wings  to  solid  nature,  interprets 
the  riddle  of  Orpheus.  The  philosophical  percep 
tion  of  identity  through  endless  mutations  of  form 
makes  him  know  the  Proteus.  What  else  am  I 
who  laughed  or  wept  yesterday,  who  slept  last  night 
like  a  corpse,  and  this  morning  stood  and  ran  ?  And 
what  see  I  on  any  side  but  the  transmigrations  of 
Proteus?  I  can  symbolize  my  thought  by  using 
the  name  of  any  creature,  of  any  fact,  because  every 
creature  is  man  agent  or  patient.  Tantalus  is  but 
a  name  for  you  and  me.  Tantalus  means  the  im 
possibility  of  drinking  the  waters  of  thought  which 
are  always  gleaming  and  waving  within  sight  of 
the  soul.  The  transmigration  of  souls  is  no  fable. 
I  would  it  were  ;  but  men  and  women  are  only  half 
human.  Every  animal  of  the  barn-yard,  the  field 
and  the  forest,  of  the  earth  and  of  the  waters  that 
are  under  the  earth,  has  contrived  to  get  a  footing 
and  to  leave  the  print  of  Its  features  and  form  in 
some  one  or  other  of  these  upright,  heaven-facing 
speakers.  Ah !  brother,  stop  the  ebb  of  thy  soul,  — 
ebbing  downward  into  the  forms  into  whose  habits 
thou  hast  now  for  many  years  slid.  As  near  and 
proper  to  us  is  also  that  old  fable  of  the  Sphinx, 
who  was  said  to  sit  in  the  road-side  and  put  riddles 
to  every  passenger.  If  the  man  could  not  answer, 
she  swallowed  him  alive  If  he  could  solve  the 


36  HISTORY. 

riddle,  the  Sphinx  was  slain.  What  is  our  life  but 
an  endless  flight  of  winged  facts  or  events  ?  In 
splendid  variety  these  changes  come,  all  putting 
questions  to  the  human  spirit.  Those  men  who 
cannot  answer  by  a  superior  wisdom  these  facts  or 
questions  of  time,  serve  them.  Facts  encumber 
them,  tyrannize  over  them,  and  make  the  men  of 
routine,  the  men  of  sense,  in  whom  a  literal  obe 
dience  to  facts  has  extinguished  every  spark  of  that 
light  by  which  man  is  truly  man.  But  if  the  man 
is  true  to  his  better  instincts  or  sentiments,  and  re 
fuses  the  dominion  of  facts,  as  one  that  comes  of  a 
higher  race  ;  remains  fast  by  the  soul  and  sees  the 
principle,  then  the  facts  fall  aptly  and  supple  into 
their  places  ;  they  know  their  master,  and  the  mean- 
est  of  them  glorifies  him. 

See  in  Goethe's  Helena  the  same  desire  that 
every  word  should  be  a  thing.  These  figures,  he 
would  say,  these  Chirons,  Griffins,  Phorkyas,  Helen 
and  Leda,  are  somewhat,  and  do  exert  a  specific  in 
fluence  on  the  mind.  So  far  then  are  they  eternal 
entities,  as  real  to-day  as  in  the  first  Olympiad. 
Much  revolving  them  he  writes  out  freely  his 
humor,  and  gives  them  body  to  his  own  imagination. 
And  although  that  poem  be  as  vague  and  fantastic 
as  a  dream,  yet  is  it  much  more  attractive  than  the 
more  regular  dramatic  pieces  of  the  same  author,  for 
the  reason  that  it  operates  a  wonderful  relief  to  the 


HISTORY.  37 

mind  from  the  routine  of  customary  images,  — 
awakens  the  reader's  invention  and  fancy  by  the 
wild  freedom  of  the  design,  and  by  the  unceasing 
succession  of  brisk  shocks  of  surprise. 

The  universal  nature,  too  strong  for  the  petty 
nature  of  the  bard,  sits  on  his  neck  and  writes 
through  his  hand  ;  so  that  when  he  seems  to  vent 
a  mere  caprice  and  wild  romance,  the  issue  is  an 
exact  allegory.  Hence  Plato  said  that "  poets  utter 
great  and  wise  things  which  they  do  not  themselves 
understand."  All  the  fictions  of  the  Middle  Age 
explain  themselves  as  a  masked  or  frolic  expression 
of  that  which  in  grave  earnest  the  mind  of  that 
period  toiled  to  achieve.  Magic  and  all  that  is  as 
cribed  to  it  is  a  deep  presentiment  of  the  powers  of 
science.  The  shoes  of  swiftness,  the  sword  of  sharp 
ness,  the  power  of  subduing  the  elements,  of  using 
the  secret  virtues  of  minerals,  of  understanding  the 
voices  of  birds,  are  the  obscure  efforts  of  the  mind 
in  a  right  direction.  The  preternatural  prowess  of 
the  hero,  the  gift  of  perpetual  youth,  and  the  like, 
are  alike  the  endeavor  of  the  human  spirit  "  to  bend 
the  shows  of  things  to  the  desires  of  the  mind." 

In  Perceforest  and  Amadis  de  Gaul  a  garland 
and  a  rose  bloom  on  the  head  of  her  who  is  faith 
ful,  and  fade  on  the  brow  of  the  inconstant.  In 
the  story  of  the  Boy  and  the  Mantle  even  a  mature 
reader  may  be  surprised  with  a  glow  of  virtuous 


38  HISTORY. 

pleasure  at  the  triumph  of  the  gentle  Genelas ;  and 
indeed  all  the  postulates  of  elfin  annals,  —  that  the 
fairies  do  not  like  to  be  named;  that  their  gifts 
are  capricious  and  not  to  be  trusted  ;  that  who 
seeks  a  treasure  must  not  speak  :  and  the  like,  —  I 
find  true  in  Concord,  however  they  might  be  in 
Cornwall  or  Bretagne. 

Is  it  otherwise  in  the  newest  romance  ?  I  read 
the  Bride  of  Lammermoor.  Sir  William  Ashton 
is  a  mask  for  a  vulgar  temptation,  Ravens  wood 
Castle  a  fine  name  for  proud  poverty,  and  the  for 
eign  mission  of  state  only  a  Bunyan  disguise  for 
honest  industry.  We  may  all  shoot  a  wild  bull 
that  would  toss  the  good  and  beautiful,  by  fighting 
down  the  unjust  and  sensual.  Lucy  Ashton  is  an 
other  name  for  fidelity,  which  is  always  beautiful 
and  always  liable  to  calamity  in  this  world. 

But  along  with  the  civil  and  metaphysical  his 
tory  of  man,  another  history  goes  daily  forward,  — 
that  of  the  external  world,  —  in  which  he  is  not  less 
strictly  implicated.  He  is  the  compend  of  time ; 
he  is  also  the  correlative  of  nature.  His  power 
consists  in  the  multitude  of  his  affinities,  in  the 
fact  that  his  life  is  intertwined  with  the  whole 
chain  of  organic  and  inorganic  being.  In  old  Rome 
the  public  roads  beginning  at  the  Forum  proceeded 
north,  south,  east,  west,  to  the  centre  of  every  prov- 


HISTORY.  39 

ince  of  the  empire,  making  each  market -town  of 
Persia,  Spain  and  Britain  pervious  to  the  soldiers 
of  the  capital :  so  out  of  the  human  heart  go  as  it 
were  highways  to  the  heart  of  every  object  in  na 
ture,  to  reduce  it  under  the  dominion  of  man.  A 
man  is  a  bundle  of  relations,  a  knot  of  roots,  whose 
flower  and  fruitage  is  the  world.  His  faculties  re 
fer  to  natures  out  of  him  and  predict  the  world  he 
is  to  inhabit,  as  the  fins  of  the  fish  foreshow  that 
water  exists,  or  the  wings  of  an  eagle  in  the  egg 
presuppose  air.  He  cannot  live  without  a  world. 
Put  Napoleon  in  an  island  prison,  let  his  faculties 
find  no  men  to  act  on,  no  Alps  to  climb,  no  stake 
to  play  for,  and  he  would  beat  the  air,  and  appear 
stupid.  Transport  him  to  large  countries,  dense 
population,  complex  interests  and  antagonist  power, 
and  you  shall  see  that  the  man  Napoleon,  bounded 
that  is  by  such  a  profile  and  outline,  is  not  the  vir 
tual  Napoleon.  This  is  but  Talbot's  shadow  ;  — - 

"  His  substance  is  not  here. 
For  what  you  see  is  but  the  smallest  part 
And  least  proportion  of  humanity  ; 
But  were  the  whole  frame  here, 
It  is  of  such  a  spacious,  lofty  pitch, 
Your  roof  were  not  sufficient  to  contain  it." 

Henry  VI. 

Columbus  needs  a  planet   to    shape  his   course 
upon.     Newton  and  Laplace  need  myriads  of  age 


40  HISTORY. 

and  thick-strewn  celestial  areas.  One  may  say  a 
gravitating  solar  system  is  already  prophesied  in 
the  nature  of  Newton's  mind.  Not  less  does  the 
brain  of  Davy  or  of  Gay-Lussac,  from  childhood 
exploring  the  affinities  and  repulsions  of  particles, 
anticipate  the  laws  of  organization.  Does  not  the 
eye  of  the  human  embryo  predict  the  light  ?  the  ear 
of  Handel  predict  the  witchcraft  of  harmonic 
sound  ?  Do  not  the  constructive  fingers  of  Watt, 
Fulton,  Whittemore,  Arkwright,  predict  the  fusi 
ble,  hard,  and  temperable  texture  of  metals,  the 
properties  of  stone,  water,  and  wood  ?  Do  not  the 
lovely  attributes  of  the  maiden  child  predict  the  re 
finements  and  decorations  of  civil  society?  Here 
also  we  are  reminded  of  the  action  of  man  on  man. 
A  mind  might  ponder  its  thoughts  for  ages  and 
not  gain  so  much  self-knowledge  as  the  passion  of 
love  shall  teach  it  in  a  day.  Who  knows  himself 
before  he  has  been  thrilled  with  indignation  at  an 
outrage,  or  has  heard  an  eloquent  tongue,  or  has 
shared  the  throb  of  thousands  in  a  national  exulta 
tion  or  alarm  ?  No  man  can  antedate  his  experi 
ence,  or  guess  what  faculty  or  feeling  a  new  object 
shall  unlock,  any  more  than  he  can  draw  to-day  the 
face  of  a  person  whom  he  shall  see  to-morrow  for 
the  first  time. 

I  will  not  now  go  behind  the  general  statement  to 
explore  the  reason  of  this  correspondency.     Let  it 


HISTORY.  41 

suffice  that  in  the  light  of  these  two  facts,  namely, 
that  the  mind  is  One,  and  that  nature  is  its  correl 
ative,  history  is  to  be  read  and  written. 

Thus  in  all  ways  does  the  soul  concentrate  and 
reproduce  its  treasures  for  each  pupil.  He  too 
shall  pass  through  the  whole  cycle  of  experience. 
He  shall  collect  into  a  focus  the  rays  of  nature. 
History  no  longer  shall  be  a  dull  book.  It  shall 
walk  incarnate  in  every  just  and  wise  man.  You 
shall  not  tell  me  by  languages  and  titles  a  catalogue 
of  the  volumes  you  have  read.  You  shall  make  me 
feel  what  periods  you  have  lived.  A  man  shall  be 
the  Temple  of  Fame.  He  shall  walk,  as  the  poets 
have  described  that  goddess,  in  a  robe  painted  all 
over  with  wonderful  events  and  experiences  ;  —  his 
own  form  and  features  by  their  exalted  intelligence 
shall  be  that  variegated  vest.  I  shall  find  in  him 
the  Fore  world ;  in  his  childhood  the  Age  of  Gold, 
the  Apples  of  Knowledge,  the  Argoiiautic  Expedi 
tion,  the  calling  of  Abraham,  the  building  of  the 
Temple,  the  Advent  of  Christ,  Dark  Ages,  the  Re 
vival  of  Letters,  the  Reformation,  the  discovery  of 
new  lands,  the  opening  of  new  sciences  and  new 
regions  in  man.  He  shall  be  the  priest  of  Pan, 
and  bring  with  him  into  humble  cottages  the  bless 
ing  of  the  morning  stars,  and  all  the  recorded  ben 
efits  of  heaven  and  earth. 

Is  there  somewhat  overweening  in  this  claim  ? 


42  HISTORY. 

Then  I  reject  all  I  have  written,  for  what  is  the 
use  of  pretending  to  know  what  we  know  not  ? 
But  it  is  the  fault  of  our  rhetoric  that  we  cannot 
strongly  state  one  fact  without  seeming  to  belie 
some  other.  I  hold  our  actual  knowledge  very 
cheap.  Hear  the  rats  in  the  wall,  see  the  lizard  on 
the  fence,  the  fungus  under  foot,  the  lichen  on  the 
log.  What  do  I  know  sympathetically,  morally,  of 
either  of  these  worlds  of  life  ?  As  old  as  the  Cau 
casian  man,  —  perhaps  older,  —  these  creatures 
have  kept  their  counsel  beside  him,  and  there  is  no 
record  of  any  word  or  sign  that  has  passed  from 
one  to  the  other.  What  connection  do  the  books 
show  between  the  fifty  or  sixty  chemical  elements 
and  the  historical  eras?  Nay,  what  does  history 
yet  record  of  the  metaphysical  annals  of  man? 
What  light  does  it  shed  on  those  mysteries  which 
we  hide  under  the  names  Death  and  Immortal 
ity  ?  Yet  every  history  should  be  written  in  a  wis 
dom  which  divined  the  range  of  our  affinities  and 
looked  at  facts  as  symbols.  I  am  ashamed  to  see 
what  a  shallow  village  tale  our  so-called  History  is 
How  many  times  we  must  say  Rome,  and  Paris, 
and  Constantinople!  What  does  Rome  know  of 
rat  and  lizard  ?  What  are  Olympiads  and  Consu 
lates  to  these  neighboring  systems  of  being  ?  Nay, 
what  food  or  experience  or  succor  have  they  for 
the  Esquimaux  seal-hunter,  for  the  Kanaka  in  his 


HISTORY.  43 

canoe,  for  the  fisherman,  the  stevedore,  the  por 
ter? 

Broader  and  deeper  we  must  write  our  annals,  — • 
from  an  ethical  reformation,  from  an  influx  of  the 
ever  new,  ever  sanative  conscience,  —  if  we  would 
trulier  express  our  central  and  wide-related  nature, 
instead  of  this  old  chronology  of  selfishness  and 
pride  to  which  we  have  too  long  lent  our  eyes.  Al 
ready  that  day  exists  for  us,  shines  in  on  us  at  un 
awares,  but  the  path  of  science  and  of  letters  is  not 
the  way  into  nature.  The  idiot,  the  Indian,  the 
child  and  unschooled  farmer's  boy  stand  nearer  to 
the  light  by  which  nature  is  to  be  read,  tnan  the 
dissector  or  the  antiquary. 


SELF-RELIANCE. 

"  Ne  te  qusesiveris  extra." 


MAN  is  his  own  star ;  and  the  soul  that  can 

Render  an  honest  and  a  perfect  man 

Commands  all  light,  all  influence,  all  fate  ; 

Nothing  to  him  falls  early  or  too  late. 

Our  acts  our  angels  are,  or  good  or  ill, 

Our  fatal  shadows  that  walk  by  us  still.* 

Epilogue  to  Beaumont  and  Fletcher's  Honest  Man's  Fortune. 


Cast  the  bantling  on  the  rocks, 
Suckle  him  with  the  she-wolf's  teat, 
Wintered  with  the  hawk  and  fox. 
Power  and  speed  be  hands  and  feet, 


II. 

SELF-RELIANCE. 


I  READ  the  other  day  some  verses  written  by  an 
eminent  painter  which  were  original  and  not  con 
ventional.  The  soul  always  hears  an  admonition 
in  such  lines,  let  the  subject  be  what  it  may.  The 
sentiment  cney  instil  is  of  more  value  than  any 
thought  they  may  contain.  To  believe  your  own 
thought,  to  believe  that  what  is  true  for  you  in 
your  private  heart  is  true  for  all  men,  —  that  is 
genius.  Speak  your  latent  conviction,  and  it  shall 
be  the  universal  sense ;  for  the  inmost  in  due  time 
becomes  the  outmost,  and  our  first  thought  is  ren 
dered  back  to  us  by  the  trumpets  of  the  Last  Judg 
ment.  Familiar  as  the  voice  of  the  mind  is  to  each, 
the  highest  merit  we  ascribe  to  Moses,  Plato  and 
Milton  is  that  they  set  at  naught  books  and  tradi 
tions,  and  spoke  not  what  men,  but  what  they 
thought.  A  man  should  learn  to  detect  and  watch 
that  gleam  of  light  which  flashes  across  his  mind 
from  within,  more  than  the  lustre  of  the  firmament 
of  bards  and  sages.  Yet  he  dismisses  without  no- 


48  SELF-RELIANCE, 

tice  his  tjiought,  because  it  is  his.  In  every  work 
of  genius  we  recognize  our  own  rejected  thoughts ; 
they  come  back  to  us  with  a  certain  alienated  maj 
esty.  Great  works  of  art  have  no  more  affecting 
lesson  for  us  than  this.  They  teach  us  to  abide  by 
our  spontaneous  impression  with  good-humored  in 
flexibility  then  most  when  the  whole  cry  of  voices  is 
on  the  other  side.  Else  to-morrow  a  stranger  will 
say  with  masterly  good  sense  precisely  what  we 
have  thought  and  felt  all  the  time,  and  we  shall  be 
forced  to  take  with  shame  our  own  opinion  from 
another. 

There  is  a  time  in  every  man's  education  when 
he  arrives  at  the  conviction  that  envy  is  ignorance  ; 
that  imitation  is  suicide  ;  that  he  must  take  him 
self  for  better  for  worse  as  his  portion  ;  that  thougb 
the  wide  universe  is  full  of  good,  no  kernel  of  nour 
ishing  corn  can  come  to  him  but  through  his  toil 
bestowed  on  that  plot  of  ground  which  is  given  to 
him  to  till.  The  power  which  resides  in  him  is 
new  in  nature,  and  none  but  he  knows  what  that  is 
which  he  can  do,  nor  does  he  know  until  he  has 
tried.  Not  for  nothing  one  face,  one  character,  one 
fact,  makes  much  impression  on  him,  and  another 
none.  This  sculpture  in  the  memory  is  not  with 
out  preestablished  harmony.  The  eye  was  placed 
where  one  ray  should  fall,  that  it  might  testify 
of  that  particular  ray.  We  but  half  express  our- 


SELF-RELIANCE.  49 

selves,  and  are  ashamed  of  that  divine  idea  which 
each  of  us  represents.  It  may  be  safely  trusted  as 
proportionate  and  of  good  issues,'  so  it  be  faithfully 
imparted,  but  God  will  not  have  his  work  made 
manifest  by  cowards.  A  man  is  relieved  and  gay 
when  he  has  put  his  heart  into  his  work  and  done 
his  best ;  but  what  he  has  said  or  done  otherwise 
shall  give  him  no  peace.  It  is  a  deliverance  which 
does  not  deliver.  In  the  attempt  his  genius  de 
serts  him ;  no  muse  befriends ;  no  invention,  no 
hope. 

Trust  thyself :  every  heart  vibrates  to  that  iron 
string.  Accept  the  place  the  divine  providence  has 
found  for  you,  the  society  of  your  contemporaries, 
the  connection  of  events.  Great  men  have  always 
done  so,  and  confided  themselves  childlike  to  the 
genius  of  their  age,  betraying  their  perception  that 
the  absolutely  trustworthy  was  seated  at  their  heart, 
working  through  their  hands,  predominating  in  all 
their  being.  And  we  are  now  men,  and  must  ac 
cept  in  the  highest  mind  the  same  transcendent 
destiny;  and  not  minors  and  invalids  in  a  protected 
comer,  not  cowards  fleeing  before  a  revolution,  but 
guides,  redeemers  and  benefactors,  obeying  the  Al 
mighty  effort  and  advancing  on  Chaos  and  the 
Dark. 

What  pretty  oracles  nature  yields  us  on  this  text 
in  the  face  and  behavior  of  children,  babes,  and 


50  SELF-RELIANCE. 

even  brutes !  That  divided  and  rebel  mind,  that 
distrust  of  a  sentiment  because  our  arithmetic  has 
computed  the  strength  and  means  opposed  to  our 
purpose,  these  have  not.  Their  mind  being  whole, 
their  eye  is  as  yet  unconquered,  and  when  we  look 
in  their  faces  we  are  disconcerted.  Infancy  con 
forms  to  nobody ;  all  conform  to  it ;  so  that  one 
babe  commonly  makes  four  or  five  out  of  the  adults 
who  prattle  and  play  to  it.  So  God  has  armed 
youth  and  puberty  and  manhood  no  less  with  its 
own  piquancy  and  charm,  and  made  it  enviable  and 
gracious  and  its  claims  not  to  be  put  by,  if  it  will 
stand  by  itself.  Do  not  think  the  youth  has  no 
force,  because  he  cannot  speak  to  you  and  me. 
Hark  !  in  the  next  room  his  voice  is  sufficiently 
clear  and  emphatic.  It  seems  he  knows  how  to 
speak  to  his  contemporaries.  Bashful  or  bold  then, 
he  will  know  how  to  make  us  seniors  very  unnec 
essary. 

The  nonchalance  of  boys  who  are  sure  of  a  din 
ner,  and  would  disdain  as  much  as  a  lord  to  do  or 
say  aught  to  conciliate  one,  is  the  healthy  attitude 
of  human  nature.  A  boy  is  in  the  parlor  what  the 
pit  is  in  the  playhouse ;  independent,  irresponsible, 
looking  out  from  his  corner  on  such  people  and 
facts  as  pass  by,  he  trios  and  sentences  them  on 
their  merits,  in  the  swift,  summary  way  of  boys,  as 
good,  bad,  interesting,  silly,  eloquent,  troublesome. 


SELF-RELIANCE.  51 

He  cumbers  himself  never  about  consequences, 
about  interests  ;  he  gives  an  independent,  genuine 
verdict.  You  must  court  him  ;  he  does  not  court 
you.  But  the  man  is  as  it  were  clapped  into  jail 
by  his  consciousness.  As  soon  as  he  has  once  acted 
or  spoken  with  £clat  he  is  a  committed  person, 
watched  by  the  sympathy  or  the  hatred  of  hun 
dreds,  whose  affections  must  now  enter  into  his  ac 
count.  There  is  no  Lethe  for  this.  Ah,  that  he 
could  pass  again  into  his  neutrality !  Who  can 
thus  avoid  all  pledges  and,  having  observed,  ob 
serve  again  from  the  same  unaffected,  unbiased,  un- 
bribable,  unaffrighted  innocence,  —  must  always  be 
formidable.  He  would  utter  opinions  on  all  pass 
ing  affairs,  which  being  seen  to  be  not  private  but 
necessary,  would  sink  like  darts  into  the  ear  of  men 
and  put  them  in  fear. 

These  are  the  voices  which  we  hear  in  solitude, 
but  they  grow  faint  and  inaudible  as  we  enter  into 
the  world.  Society  everywhere  is  in  conspiracy 
against  the  manhood  of  every  one  of  its  members. 
/Society  is  a  joint-stock  company,  in  which  the  mem 
bers  agree,  for  the  better  securing  of  his  bread  to 
each  shareholder,  to  surrender  the  liberty  and  cul 
ture  of  the  eater.  The  virtue  in  most  request  is 
conformity.  /  Self-reliance  is  its  aversion.  It  loves 
not  realities  and  creators,  but  names  and  customs. 
Whoso  would  be  a  man,  must  be  a  nonconform- 


62  SELF-RELIANCE. 

ist.  He  who  would  gather  immortal  palms  must 
not  be  hindered  by  the  name  of  goodness,  but  must 
explore  if  it  be  goodness.  Nothing  is  at  last  sacred 
but  the  integrity  of  your  own  mind.  Absolve  you 
to  yourself,  and  you  shall  have  the  suffrage  of  the 
world.  I  remember  an  answer  which  when  quite 
young  I  was  prompted  to  make  to  a  valued  adviser 
who  was  wont  to  importune  me  with  the  dear  old 
doctrines  of  the  church.  On  my  saying,  "  What 
have  I  to  do  with  the  sacredness  of  traditions,  if  I 
live  wholly  from  within  ?  "  my  friend  suggested,  — 
"  But  these  impulses  may  be  from  below,  not  from 
above."  I  replied,  "  They  do  not  seem  to  me  to 
be  such ;  but  if  I  am  the  Devil's  child,  I  will  live 
then  from  the  Devil."  No  law  can  be  sacred  to 
me  but  that  of  my  nature.  Good  and  bad  are  but 
names  very  readily  transferable  to  that  or  this ;  the 
only  right  is  what  is  after  my  constitution  ;  the 
only  wrong  what  is  against  it.  A  man  is  to  carry 
himself  in  the  presence  of  all  opposition  as  if  every 
thing  were  titular  and  ephemeral  but  he.  I  am 
ashamed  to  think  how  easily  we  capitulate  to  badges 
and  names,  to  large  societies  and  dead  institutions. 
Every  decent  and  well-spoken  individual  affects 
and  sways  me  more  than  is  right.  I  ought  to  go 
upright  and  vital,  and  speak  the  rude  truth  in  aO 
ways.  If  malice  and  vanity  wear  the  coat  of  phi 
lanthropy,  shall  that  pass  ?  If  an  angry  bigot  a* 


SELF-RELIANCE.  53 

fmmes  this  bountiful  cause  of  Abolition,  and  comes 
to  me  with  his  last  news  from  Barbadoes,  why 
should  I  not  say  to  him,  '  Go  love  thy  infant ;  love 
thy  wood-chopper  ;  be  good  -  natured  and  modest ; 
have  that  grace ;  and  never  varnish  your  hard,  un 
charitable  ambition  with  this  incredible  tenderness 
for  black  folk  a  thousand  miles  off.  Thy  love  afar 
is  spite  at  home.'  Rough  and  graceless  would  be 
such  greeting,  but  truth  is  handsomer  than  the  af 
fectation  of  love.  Your  goodness  must  have  some 
edge  to  it,  —  else  it  is  none.  The  doctrine  of  ha 
tred  must  be  preached,  as  the  counteraction  of  the 
doctrine  of  love,  when  that  pules  and  whines.  I 
shun  father  and  mother  and  wife  and  brother  when 
my  genius  calls  me.  I  would  write  on  the  lintels 
of  the  door-post,  Whim.  I  hope  it  is  somewhat 
better  than  whim  at  last,  but  we  cannot  spend  the 
day  in  explanation.  Expect  me  not  to  show  cause 
why  I  seek  or  why  I  exclude  company.  Then  again, 
do  not  tell  me,  as  a  good  man  did  to-day,  of  my  ob 
ligation  to  put  all  poor  men  in  good  situations. 
Are  they  my  poor  ?  I  tell  thee  thou  foolish  philan 
thropist  that  I  grudge  the  dollar,  the  dime,  the 
cent  I  give  to  such  men  as  do  not  belong  to  me 
and  to  whom  I  do  not  belong.  There  is  a  class  of 
persons  to  whom  by  all  spiritual  affinity  I  am 
bought  and  sold  ;  for  them  I  will  go  to  prison  ii 
need  be  ;  but  your  miscellaneous  popular  charities  < 


64  SELF-RELIANCE. 

the  education  at  college  of  fools  ;  the  bailding  of 
meeting-houses  to  the  vain  end  to  which  many  now 
stand ;  alms  to  sots,  and  the  thousand-fold  Relief 
Societies  ;  —  though  I  confess  with  shame  I  some 
times  succumb  and  give  the  dollar,  it  is  a  wicked 
dollar,  which  by  and  by  I  shall  have  the  manhood 
to  withhold. 

Virtues  are,  in  the  popular  estimate,  rather  the 
exception  than  the  rule.  There  is  the  man  and  his 
virtues.  Men  do  what  is  called  a  good  action,  as 
some  piece  of  courage  or  charity,  much  as  they 
would  pay  a  fine  in  expiation  of  daily  non-appear 
ance  on  parade.  Their  works  are  done  as  an  apol 
ogy  or  extenuation  of  their  living  in  the  world,  — • 
as  invalids  and  the  insane  pay  a  high  board.  Their 
virtues  are  penances.  I  do  not  wish  to  expiate, 
but  to  live.  My  life  is  for  itself  and  not  for  a 
spectacle.  I  much  prefer  that  it  should  be  of  a 
lower  strain,  so  it  be  genuine  and  equal,  than  that 
it  should  be  glittering  and  unsteady.  I  wish  it  to 
be  sound  and  sweet,  and  not  to  need  diet  and  bleed 
ing.  I  ask  primary  evidence  that  you  are  a  man, 
and  refuse  this  appeal  from  the  man  to  his  actions. 
I  know  that  for  myself  it  makes  no  difference 
whether  I  do  or  forbear  those  actions  which  are 
reckoned  excellent.  I  cannot  consent  to  pay  for  a 
privilege  where  I  have  intrinsic  right.  Few  and 
mean  as  my  gifts  may  be,  I  actually  am,  and  da 


SELF-RELIANCE.  55 

not  need  for  my  own  assurance  or  the  assurance 
of  my  fellows  any  secondary  testimony. 

What  I  must  do  is  all  that  concerns  me,  not 
what  the  people  think.  This  rule,  equally  arduous 
in  actual  and  in  intellectual  life,  may  serve  for  the 
whole  distinction  between  greatness  and  meanness. 
It  is  the  harder  because  you  will  always  find  those 
who  think  they  know  what  is  your  duty  better  than 
you  know  it.  It  is  easy  in  the  world  to  live  after 
the  world's  opinion ;  it  is  easy  in  solitude  to  live  af 
ter  our  own  ;  but  the  great  man  is  he  who  in  the 
midst  of  the  crowd  keeps  with  perfect  sweetness 
the  independence  of  solitude. 

The  objection  to  conforming  to  usages  that  have 
become  dead  to  you  is  that  it  scatters  your  force. 
It  loses  your  time  and  blurs  the  impression  of  your 
character.  If  you  maintain  a  dead  church,  contrib 
ute  to  a  dead  Bible- society,  vote  with  a  great  party 
either  for  the  government  or  against  it,  spread  your 
table  like  base  housekeepers,  —  under  all  these 
screens  I  have  difficulty  to  detect  the  precise  man 
you  are :  and  of  course  so  much  force  is  withdrawn 
from  your  proper  life.  But  do  your  work,  and  I 
shall  know  you.  Do  your  work,  and  you  shall  re 
inforce  yourself.  A  man  must  consider  what  a 
blindman's-buff  is  this  game  of  conformity.  If  I 
know  your  sect  I  anticipate  your  argument.  I  hear 
a  preacher  announce  for  his  text  and  topic  the  ex« 


56  SELF-RELIANCE. 

pediency  of  one  of  the  institutions  of  his  church. 
Do  I  not  know  beforehand  that  not  possibly  can  he 
say  a  new  and  spontaneous  word  ?  Do  I  not  know 
that  with  all  this  ostentation  of  examining  the 
grounds  of  the  institution  he  will  do  no  such  thing  ? 
Do  I  not  know  that  he  is  pledged  to  himself  not  to 
look  but  at  one  side,  the  permitted  side,  not  as  a 
man,  but  as  a  parish  minister  ?  He  is  a  retained 
attorney,  and  these  airs  of  the  bench  are  the  empti 
est  affectation.  Well,  most  men  have  bound  their 
eyes  with  one  or  another  handkerchief,  and  attached 
themselves  to  some  one  of  these  communities  of 
opinion.  This  conformity  makes  them  not  false  in 
a  few  particulars,  authors  of  a  few  lies,  but  false  in 
all  particulars.  Their  every  truth  is  not  quite  true. 
Their  two  is  not  the  real  two,  their  four  not  the 
real  four  ;  so  that  every*  word  they  say  chagrins  us 
and  we  know  not  where  to  begin  to  set  them  right. 
Meantime  nature  is  not  slow  to  equip  us  in  the 
prison-uniform  of  the  party  to  which  we  adhere. 
We  come  to  wear  one  cut  of  face  and  figure,  and 
acquire  by  degrees  the  gentlest  asinine  expression. 
There  is  a  mortifying  experience  in  particular, 
which  does  not  fail  to  wreak  itself  also  in  the  gen 
eral  history  ;  I  mean  "  the  foolish  face  of  praise," 
the  forced  smile  which  we  put  on  in  company  where 
we  do  not  feel  at  ease,  in  answer  to  conversation 
which  does  not  interest  us.  The  muscles,  not  spon* 


SELF-RELIANCE.  57 

fcaneously  moved  but  moved  by  a  low  usurping  wil- 
fulness,  grow  tight  about  the  outline  of  the  face, 
with  the  most  disagreeable  sensation. 

For  nonconformity  the  world  whips  you  with  its 
displeasure.  And  therefore  a  man  must  know  how 
to  estimate  a  sour  face.  The  by-standers  look  ask 
ance  on  him  in  the  public  street  or  in  the  friend's 
parlor.  If  this  aversation  had  its  origin  in  contempt 
and  resistance  like  his  own  he  might  well  go  home 
with  a  sad  countenance  ;  but  the  sour  faces  of  the 
multitude,  like  their  sweet  faces,  have  no  deep 
cause,  but  are  put  on  and  off  as  the  wind  blows  and 
a  newspaper  directs.  Yet  is  the  discontent  of  the 
multitude  more  formidable  than  that  of  the  senate 
and  the  college.  It  is  easy  enough  for  a  firm  man 
who  knows  the  world  to  brook  the  rage  of  the  culti 
vated  classes.  Their  rage  is  decorous  and  prudent, 
for  they  are  timid,  as  being  very  vulnerable  them 
selves.  But  when  to  their  feminine  rage  the  indig 
nation  of  the  people  is  added,  when  the  ignorant 
and  the  poor  are  aroused,  when  the  unintelligent 
brute  force  that  lies  at  the  bottom  of  society  is 
made  to  growl  and  mow,  it  needs  the  habit  of  mag; 
nanimity  and  religion  to  treat  it  godlike  as  a  trifle 
of  no  concernment. 

The  other  terror  that  scares  us  from  self-trust  is 
our  consistency ;  a  reverence  for  our  past  act  or 
word  because  the  eyes  of  others  have  no  other  data 


58  SELF-RELIANCE. 

for  computing  our  orbit  than  our  past  acts,  and  we 
are  loath  to  disappoint  them. 

But  why  should  you  keep  your  head  over  your 
shoulder?  Why  drag  about  this  corpse  of  your 
memory,  lest  you  contradict  somewhat  you  have 
stated  in  this  or  that  public  place  ?  Suppose  you 
should  contradict  yourself  ;  what  then  ?  It  seems 
to  be  a  rule  of  wisdom  never  to  rely  on  your  mem 
ory  alone,  scarcely  even  in  acts  of  pure  memory, 
but  to  bring  the  past  for  judgment  into  the  thou 
sand-eyed  present,  and  live  ever  in  a  new  day.  In 
your  metaphysics  you  have  denied  personality  to 
the  Deity,  yet  when  the  devout  motions  of  the  soul 
come,  yield  to  them  heart  and  life,  though  they 
should  clothe  God  with  shape  and  color.  Leave 
your  theory,  as  Joseph  his  coat  in  the  hand  of  the 
harlot,  and  flee. 

A  foolish  consistency  is  the  hobgoblin  of  little 
minds,  adored  by  little  statesmen  and  philosophers 
and  divines.  With  consistency  a  great  soul  has 
simply  nothing  to  do.  He  may  as  well  concern 
himself  with  his  shadow  on  the  wall.  Speak  what 
you  think  now  in  hard  words  and  to-morrow  speak 
what  to-morrow  thinks  in  hard  words  again,  though 
it  contradict  every  thing  you  said  to-day.  —  '  Ah, 
so  you  shall  be  sure  to  be  misunderstood.'  —  Is  it 
so  bad  then  to  be  misunderstood  ?  Pythagoras 
was  misunderstood,  and  Socrates,  and  Jesus,  and 


SELF-RELIANCE.  59 

Luther,  and  Copernicus,  and  Galileo,  and  Newton, 
and  every  pure  and  wise  spirit  that  ever  took  flesh. 
To  be  great  is  to  be  misunderstood. 

I  suppose  no  man  can  violate  his  nature.  All 
the  sallies  of  his  will  are  rounded  in  by  the  law  of 
his  being,  as  the  inequalities  of  Andes  and  Him- 
maleh  are  insignificant  in  the  curve  of  the  sphere. 
Nor  does  it  matter  how  you  gauge  and  try  him.  A 
character  is  like  an  acrostic  or  Alexandrian  stanza; 
—  read  it  forward,  backward,  or  across,  it  still 
spells  the  same  thing.  In  this  pleasing  contrite 
wood-life  which  God  allows  me,  let  me  record  day 
by  day  my  honest  thought  without  prospect  or  re 
trospect,  and,  I  cannot  doubt,  it  will  be  found  sym- 
metricai,  though  I  mean  it  not  and  see  it  not./'  My 
book  should  smell  of  pines  and  resound  with  the 
hum  of  insects.  /The  swallow  over  my  window 
should  interweave  that  thread  or  straw  he  carries 
in  his  bill  into  my  web  also.  We  pass  for  what  we 
are.  Character  teaches  above  our  wills.  Men  im 
agine  that  they  communicate  their  virtue  or  vice 
only  by  overt  actions,  and  do  not  see  that  virtue  or 
%ice  emit  a  breath  every  moment. 

There  will  be  an  agreement  in  whatever  variety 
of  actions,  so  they  be  each  honest  and  natural  in 
their  hour.  For  of  one  will,  the  actions  will  be 
harmonious,  however  unlike  they  seem.  These  va- 
» icties  are  lost  sight  of  at  a  little  distance,  at  a  little 


60  .SELF-RELIANCE. 

height  of  thought.  One  tendency  unites  them  all. 
The  voyage  of  the  best  ship  is  a  zigzag  line  of  a 
hundred  tacks.  See  the  line  from  a  sufficient  dis 
tance,  and  it  straightens  itself  to  the  average  ten 
dency.  Your  genuine  action  will  explain  itself  and 
will  explain  your  other  genuine  actions.  Your  con 
formity  explains  nothing.  Act  singly,  and  what 
you  have  already  done  singly  will  justify  you  now. 
Greatness  appeals  to  the  future.  If  I  can  be  firm 
enough  to-day  to  do  right  and  scorn  eyes,  I  must 
have  done  so  much  right  before  as  to  defend  me 
now.  Be  it  how  it  will,  do  right  now.  Always 
scorn  appearances  and  you  always  may.  The  force 
of  character  is  cumulative.  All  the  foregone  days 
of  virtue  work  their  health  into  this.  What  makes 
the  majesty  of  the  heroes  of  the  senate  and  the 
field,  which  so  fills  the  imagination  ?  The  con 
sciousness  of  a  train  of  great  days  and  victories 
behind.  They  shed  an  united  light  on  the  advanc 
ing  actor.  He  is  attended  as  by  a  visible  escort  of 
angels.  That  is  it  which  throws  thunder  into  Chat- 

O 

ham's  voice,  and  dignity  into  Washington's  port, 
and  America  into  Adams's  eye.  Honor  is  venerable 
to  us  because  it  is  no  ephemera.  It  is  always  an 
cient  virtue.  We  worship  it  to-day  because  it  is 
not  of  to-day.  We  love  it  and  pay  it  homage  be 
cause  it  is  not  a  trap  for  our  love  and  homage,  but 
is  self-dependent,  self-derived,  and  therefore  of  an 


SELF-RELIANCE.  61 

old  immaculate  pedigree,  even  if  shown  in  a  young 
person. 

I  hope  in  these  days  we  have  heard  the  last  of 
conformity  and  consistency.  Let  the  words  be  ga 
zetted  and  ridiculous  henceforward.  Instead  of  the 
gong  for  dinner,  let  us  hear  a  whistle  from  the 
Spartan  fife.  Let  us  never  bow  and  apologize 
more.  A  great  man  is  coming  to  eat  at  my  house. 
I  do  not  wish  to  please  him ;  I  wish  that  he  should 
wish  to  please  me.  I  will  stand  here  for  humanity, 
and  though  I  would  make  it  kind,  I  would  make  it 
true.  Let  us  affront  and  reprimand  the  smooth 
mediocrity  and  squalid  contentment  of  the  times, 
and  hurl  in  the  face  of  custom  and  trade  and  office, 
the  fact  which  is  the  upshot  of  all  history,  that 
there  is  a  great  responsible  Thinker  and  Actor 
working  wherever  a  man  works  ;  that  a  true  man 
belongs  to  no  other  time  or  place,  but  is  the  centre 
of  things.  Where  he  is,  there  is  nature.  He  meas 
ures  you  and  all  men  and  all  events.  Ordinarily, 
every  body  in  society  reminds  us  of  somewhat  else, 
or  of  some  othej"  person.  Character,  reality,  re 
minds  you  of  nothing  else;  it  takes  place  of  the 
whole  creation.  The  man  must  be  so  much  that  he 
must  make  all  circumstances  indifferent.  Every 
true  man  is  a  cause,  a  country,  and  an  age ;  requires 
infinite  spaces  and  numbers  and  time  fully  to  ac 
complish  his  design ;  —  and  posterity  seem  to  fol- 


62  SELF-RELIANCE. 

low  his  steps  as  a  train  of  clients.  A  man  Csesai 
is  born,  and  for  ages  after  we  have  a  Roman  Em 
pire.  Christ  is  born,  and  millions  of  minds  so  grow 
and  cleave  to  his  genius  tha^t  he  is  confounded  with 
virtue  and  the  possible  of  man.  An  institution  is 
the  lengthened  shadow  of  one  man  ;  as,  Monachism^ 
of  the  Hermit  Antony ;  the  Reformation,  of  Luther ; 
Quakerism,  of  Fox  ;  Methodism,  of  Wesley  ;  Abo 
lition,  of  Clarkson.  Scipio,  Milton  called  "the 
height  of  Rome ; "  and  all  history  resolves  itself 
very  easily  into  the  biography  of  a  few  stout  and 
earnest  persons. 

Let  a  man  then  know  his  worth,  and  keep  things 
under  his  feet.  Let  him  not  peep  or  steal,  or  skulk 
up  and  down  with  the  air  of  a  charity-boy,  a  bas 
tard,  or  an  interloper  in  the  world  which  exists  for 
him.  But  the  man  in  the  street,  finding  no  worth 
in  himself  which  corresponds  to  the  force  which 
built  a  tower  or  sculptured  a  marble  god,  feels  poor 
when  he  looks  on  these.  To  him  a  palace,  a  statue, 
or  a  costly  book  have  an  alien  and  forbidding  air, 
much  like  a  gay  equipage,  and  seem  to  say  like  that, 
'  Who  are  you,  Sir  ?  *  Yet  they  all  are  his,  suitors 
for  his  notice,  petitioners  to  his  faculties  that  they 
will  come  out  and  take  possession.  The  picture 
waits  for  my  verdict ;  it  is  not  to  command  me, 
but  I  am  to  settle  its  claims  to  praise.  That 
popular  fable  of  the  sot  who  was  picked  up 


SELF-RELIANCE.  63 

dead-drunk  in  the  street,  carried  to  the  duke's 
house,  washed  and  dressed  and  laid  in  the  duke's 
bed,  and,  on  his  waking,  treated  with  all  obsequious 
ceremony  like  the  duke,  and  assured  that  he  had 
been  insane,  owes  its  popularity  to  the  fact  that  it 
symbolizes  so  well  the  state  of  man,  who  is  in  the 
world  a  sort  of  sot,  but  now  and  then  wakes  up,  ex 
ercises  his  reason  and  finds  himself  a  true  prince. 

Our  reading  is  mendicant  and  sycophantic.  In 
history  our  imagination  plays  us  false.  Kingdom 
and  lordship,  power  and  estate,  are  a  gaudier  vo 
cabulary  than  private  John  and  Edward  in  a  small 
house  and  common  day's  work ;  but  the  things  of 
life  are  the  same  to  both ;  the  sum  total  of  both  is 
the  same.  Why  all  this  deference  to  Alfred  and 
Scanderbeg  and  Gustavus  ?  Suppose  they  were  vir 
tuous  ;  did  they  wear  out  virtue  ?  As  great  a  stake 
depends  on  your  private  act  to-day  as  followed  their 
public  and  renowned  steps.  When  private  men 
shall  act  with  original  views,  the  lustre  will  be  trans 
ferred  from  the  actions  of  kings  to  those  of  gen 
tlemen. 

The  world  has  been  instructed  by  its  kings,  who 
have  so  magnetized  the  eyes  of  nations.  It  has 
been  taught  by  this  colossal  symbol  the  mutual 
reverence  that  is  due  from  man  to  man.  The  joy 
ful  loyalty  with  which  men  have  everywhere  suf« 
iircd  the  king,  the  noble,  or  the  great  proprietor  to 


64  SELF-RELIANCE. 

walk  among  them  by  a  law  of  his  own,  make  his 
own  scale  of  men  and  things  and  reverse  theirs, 
pay  for  benefits  not  with  money  but  with  honor, 
and  represent  the  law  in  his  person,  was  the  hie= 
roglyphic  by  which  they  obscurely  signified  their 
consciousness  of  their  own  right  and  comeliness^, 
the  right  of  every  man. 

The  magnetism  which  all  original  action  exerts 
is  explained  when  we  inquire  the  reason  of  self- 
trust.  Who  is  the  Trustee  ?  What  is  the  aborigi 
nal  Self,  on  which  a  universal  reliance  may  be 
grounded?  What  is  the  nature  and  power  of  that 
science-baffling  star,  without  parallax,  without  cal 
culable  elements,  which  shoots  a  ray  of  beauty 
even  into  trivial  and  impure  actions,  if  the  least 
mark  of  independence  appear  ?  The  inquiry  leads 
us  to  that  source,  at  once  the  essence  of  genius,  of 
virtue,  and  of  life,  which  we  call  Spontaneity  or  In 
stinct.  We  denote  this  primary  wisdom  as  Intui 
tion,  whilst  all  later  teachings  are  tuitions.  In 
that  deep  force,  the  last  fact  behind  which  analysis 
cannot  go,  all  things  find  their  common  origin.  For 
the  sense  of  being  which  in  calm  hours  rises,  we 
know  not  how,  in  the  soul,  is  not  diverse  from  things, 
from  space,  from  light,  from  time,  from  man,  but 
one  with  them  and  proceeds  obviously  from  the 
same  source  whence  their  life  and  being  also  pro 
ceed.  We  first  share  the  life  by  which  things  exist 


SELF-RELIANCE.  65 

and  afterwards  see  them  as  appearances  in  nature 
and  forget  that  we  have  shared  their  cause.  Here 

O 

is  the  fountain  of  action  and  of  thought.  Here 
are  the  lungs  of  that  inspiration  which  giveth  man 
wisdom  and  which  cannot  be  denied  without  im 
piety  and  atheism.  We  lie  in  the  lap  of  immense 
intelligence,  which  makes  us  receivers  of  its  truth 
and  organs  of  its  activity.  When  we  discern  jus 
tice,  when  we  discern  truth,  we  do  nothing  of  our 
selves,  but  allow  a  passage  to  its  beams.  If  we  ask 
whence  this  comes,  if  we  seek  to  pry  into  the  soul 
that  causes,  all  philosophy  is  at  fault.  Its  presence 
or  its  absence  is  all  we  can  affirm.  Every  man  dis 
criminates  between  the  voluntary  acts  of  his  mind 
and  his  involuntary  perceptions,  and  knows  that 
to  his  involuntary  perceptions  a  perfect  faith  is  due. 
He  may  err  in  the  expression  of  them,  but  he  knows 
that  these  things  are  so,  like  day  and  night,  not  to 
be  disputed.  My  wilful  actions  and  acquisitions 
are  but  roving ;  —  the  idlest  reverie,  the  faintest 
native  emotion,  command  my  curiosity  and  respect. 
Thoughtless  people  contradict  as  readily  the  state 
ment  of  perceptions  as  of  opinions,  or  rather  much 
more  readily ;  for  they  do  not  distinguish  between 
perception  and  notion.  They  fancy  that  I  choose  to 
see  this  or  that  thing.  But  perception  is  not  whim 
sical,  but  fatal.  If  I  see  a  trait,  my  children  will 
see  it  after  me,  and  in  course  of  time  all  mankind, 

VOL.   U-  5 


66  SELF-RELIANCE. 

—  although  it  may  chance  that  no  one  has  seen  it 
before  me.  For  my  perception  of  it  is  as  much 
a  fact  as  the  sun. 

The  relations  of  the  soul  to  the  divine  spirit  are 
so  pure  that  it  is  profane  to  seek  to  interpose  helps. 
It  must  be  that  when  God  speaketh  he  should  com- 
municate,  not  one  thing,  but  all  things  ;  should  fill 
the  world  with  his  voice  ;  should  scatter  forth  light, 
nature,  time,  souls,  from  the  centre  of  the  present 
thought ;  and  new  date  and  new  create  the  whole. 
Whenever  a  mind  is  simple  and  receives  a  divine 
wisdom,  old  things  pass  away,  —  means,  teachers, 
texts,  temples  fall ;  it  lives  now,  and  absorbs  past 
and  future  into  the  present  hour.  All  things  are 
made  sacred  by  relation  to  it,  —  one  as  much  as  an 
other.  All  things  are  dissolved  to  their  centre  by 
their  cause,  and  in  the  universal  miracle  petty  and 
particular  miracles  disappear.  If  therefore  a  man 
claims  to  know  and  speak  of  God  and  carries  you 
backward  to  the  phraseology  of  some  old  mould 
ered  nation  in  another  country,  in  another  world, 
believe  him  not.  Is  the  acorn  better  than  the  oak 
which  is  its  fulness  and  completion  ?  Is  the  par 
ent  better  than  the  child  into  whom  he  has  cast  his 
ripened  being  ?  Whence  then  this  worship  of  the 
past  ?  The  centuries  are  conspirators  against  the 
sanity  and  authority  of  the  soul.  Time  and  space 
are  but  physiological  colors  which  the  eye  makes, 


SELF-RELIANCE.  67 

but  the  soul  is  light :  where  it  is,  is  day ;  where  it 
was,  is  night ;  and  history  is  an  impertinence  and 
an  injury  if  it  be  any  thing  more  than  a  cheerful 
apologue  or  parable  of  my  being  and  becoming,, 

Man  is  timid  and  apologetic  ;  he  is  no  longer  up 
right  ;  he  dares  not  say  '  I  think,'  c  I  am,'  but 
quotes  some  saint  or  sage.  He  is  ashamed  before 
the  blade  of  grass  or  the  blowing  rose.  These 
roses  under  my  window  make  no  reference  to  for 
mer  roses  or  to  better  ones ;  they  are  for  what  they 
are  ;  they  exist  with  God  to-day.  There  is  no  time 
to  them.  There  is  simply  the  rose ;  it  is  perfect  in 
every  moment  of  its  existence.  Before  a  leaf-bud 
has  burst,  its  whole  life  acts ;  in  the  full-blown 
flower  there  is  no  more  ;  in  the  leafless  root  there 
is  no  less.  Its  nature  is  satisfied  and  it  satisfies 
nature  in  all  moments  alike.  But  man  postpones 
or  remembers  ;  he  does  not  live  in  the  present,  but 
with  reverted  eye  laments  the  past,  or,  heedless  of 
the  riches  that  surround  him,  stands  on  tiptoe  to  fore 
see  the  future.  He  cannot  be  happy  and  strong  un 
til  he  too  lives  with  nature  in  the  present,  above  time. 

This  should  be  plain  enough.  Yet  see  what 
strong  intellects  dare  not  yet  hear  God  himself  un 
less  he  speak  the  phraseology  of  I  know  not  what 
David,  or  Jeremiah,  ov  Paul.  We  shall  not  al 
ways  set  so  great  a  price  on  a  few  texts,  on  a  few 
lives.  We  are  like  children  who  repeat  by  roto 


68  SELF-RELIANCE. 

the  sentences  of  grandames  and  tutors,  and,  as  they 
grow  older,  of  the  men  of  talents  and  character 
they  chance  to  see,  —  painfully  recollecting  the  ex 
act  words  they  spoke  ;  afterwards,  when  they  come 
into  the  point  of  view  which  those  had  who  uttered 
these  sayings,  they  understand  them  and  are  willing 
to  let  the  words  go  ;  for  at  any  time  they  can  use 
words  as  good  when  occasion  conies.  If  we  live 
truly,  we  shall  see  truly.  It  is  as  easy  for  the 
strong  man  to  be  strong,  as  it  is  for  the  weak  to  be 
weak.  When  we  have  new  perception,  we  shall 
gladly  disburden  the  memory  of  its  hoarded  treas 
ures  as  old  rubbish.  When  a  man  lives  with  God, 
his  voice  shall  be  as  sweet  as  the  murmur  of  the 
brook  and  the  rustle  of  the  corn. 

And  now  at  last  the  highest  truth  on  this  subject 
remains  unsaid  ,-  probably  cannot  be  said ;  for  all 
that  we  say  is  the  far-off  remembering  of  the  intui 
tion.  That  thought  by  what  I  can  now  nearest  ap 
proach  to  say  it,  is  this.  When  good  is  near  you, 
when  you  have  life  in  yourself,  it  is  not  by  any 
known  or  accustomed  way;  you  shall  not  discern 
the  footprints  of  any  other ;  you  shall  not  see  the 
face  of  man  ;  you  shall  not  hear  any  name  ;  —  tho 
way,  the  thought,  the  good,  shall  be  wholly  strange 
and  new.  It  shall  exclude  example  and  experience. 
You  take  the  way  from  man,  not  to  man.  All  per 
sons  that  ever  existed  are  its  forgotten  ministers. 


SELF-RELIANCE.  69 

Fear  and  hope  are  alike  beneath  it.  There  is 
somewhat  low  even  in  hope.  In  the  hour  of  vision 
there  is  nothing  that  can  be  called  gratitude,  nor 
properly  joy.  The  soul  raised  over  passion  be 
holds  identity  and  eternal  causation,  perceives  the 
self-existence  of  Truth  and  Right,  and  calms  itself 
with  knowing  that  all  things  go  well.  Vast  spaces 
of  nature,  the  Atlantic  Ocean,  the  South  Sea ;  long 
intervals  of  time,  years,  centuries,  are  of  no  account. 
This  which  I  think  and  feel  underlay  every  former 
state  of  life  and  circumstances,  as  it  does  underlie 
my  present,  and  what  is  called  life  and  what  is 
called  death. 

Life  only  avails,  not  the  having  lived.  Power 
ceases  in  the  instant  of  repose  ;  it  resides  in  the  mo 
ment  of  transition  from  a  past  to  a  new  state,  in 
the  shooting  of  the  gulf,  in  the  darting  to  an  aim. 
This  one  fact  the  world  hates  ;  that  the  soul  be 
comes  ;  for  that  forever  degrades  the  past,  turns  all 
riches  to  poverty,  all  reputation  to  a  shame,  con 
founds  the  saint  with  the  rogue,  shoves  Jesus  and 
Judas  equally  aside.  Why  then  do  we  prate  of 
self-reliance  ?  Inasmuch  as  the  soul  is  present 
there  will  be  power  not  confident  but  agent.  To 
talk  of  reliance  is  a  poor  external  way  of  speaking. 
Speak  rather  of  that  which  relies  because  it  works 
and  is.  Who  has  more  obedience  than  I  masters 
aie,  though  he  should  not  raise  his  finger.  Round 


70  SELF-RELIANCE. 

him  I  must  revolve  by  the  gravitation  of  spirits. 
We  fancy  it  rhetoric  when  we  speak  of  eminent 
virtue.  We  do  not  yet  see  that  virtue  is  Height, 
and  that  a  man  or  a  company  of  men,  plastic  and 
permeable  to  principles,  by  the  law  of  nature  must 
overpower  and  ride  all  cities,  nations,  kings,  rich 
men,  poets,  who  are  not. 

This  is  the  ultimate  fact  which  we  so  quickly 
reach  on  this,  as  on  every  topic,  the  resolution  of 
all  into  the  ever-blessed  ONE.  Self -existence  is  the 
attribute  of  the  Supreme  Cause,  and  it  constitutes 
the  measure  of  good  by  the  degree  in  which  it  en 
ters  into  all  lower  forms.  All  things  real  are  so  by 
so  much  virtue  as  they  contain.  Commerce,  hus 
bandry,  hunting,  whaling,  war,  eloquence,  personal 
weight,  are  somewhat,  and  engage  my  respect  as 
examples  of  its  presence  and  impure  action.  I  see 
the  same  law  working  in  nature  for  conservation 
and  growth.  Power  is,  in  nature,  the  essential 
measure  of  right.  Nature  suffers  nothing  to  re 
main  in  her  kingdoms  which  cannot  help  itself. 
The  genesis  and  maturation  of  a  planet,  its  poise 
and  orbit,  the  bended  tree  recovering  itself  from 
the  strong  wind,  the  vital  resources  of  every  animal 
and  vegetable,  are  demonstrations  of  the  self-suf° 
ficing  and  therefore  self-relying  soul. 

Thus  all  concentrates  :  let  us  not  rove  ;  let  us  sit 
at  home  with  the  cause.  Let  us  stun  and  astonish 


SELF-RELIANCE.  71 

the  intruding  rabble  of  men  and  books  and  institu 
tions  by  a  simple  declaration  of  the  divine  fact. 
Bid  the  invaders  take  the  shoes  from  off  their  feet, 
for  God  is  here  within.  Let  our  simplicity  judge 
them,  and  our  docility  to  our  own  law  demonstrate 
the  poverty  of  nature  and  fortune  beside  our  native 
riches. 

But  now  we  are  a  mob.  Man  does  not  stand  in 
awe  of  man,  nor  is  his  genius  admonished  to  stay 
at  home,  to  put  itself  in  communication  with  the  in 
ternal  ocean,  but  it  goes  abroad  to  beg  a  cup  of  wa 
ter  of  the  urns  of  other  men.  We  must  go  alone. 
I  like  the  silent  church  before  the  service  begins, 
better  than  any  preaching.  How  far  off,  how  cool, 
how  chaste  the  persons  look,  begirt  each  one  with  a 
precinct  or  sanctuary  !  So  let  us  always  sit.  Why 
should  we  assume  the  faults  of  our  friend,  or  wife, 
or  father,  or  child,  because  they  sit  around  our 
hearth,  or  are  said  to  have  the  same  blood?  All 
men  have  my  blood  and  I  have  all  men's.  Not  for 
that  will  I  adopt  their  petulance  or  folly,  even  to 
the  extent  of  being  ashamed  of  it.  But  your  isola 
tion  must  not  be  mechanical,  but  spiritual,  that  is* 
must  be  elevation.  At  times  the  whole  world  seems 
to  be  in  conspiracy  to  importune  you  with  emphatic 
trifles.  Friend,  client,  child,  sickness,  fear,  want, 
charity,  all  knock  at  once  at  thy  closet  door  and 
8<1>y?  — '  Come  out  unto  us.'  But  keep  thy  state  ; 


72  SELF-RELIANCE. 

come  not  intc  their  confusion.  The  power  men 
possess  to  annoy  me  I  give  them  by  a  weak  curios 
ity.  No  man  can  come  near  me  but  through  my 
act.  "  What  we  love  that  we  have,  but  by  desire 
we  bereave  ourselves  of  the  love." 

If  we  cannot  at  once  rise  to  the  sanctities  of  obe 
dience  and  faith,  let  us  at  least  resist  our  tempta 
tions  ;  let  us  enter  into  the  state  of  war  and  wake 
Thor  and  Woden,  courage  and  constancy,  in  our 
Saxon  breasts.  This  is  to  be  done  in  our  smooth 
times  by  speaking  the  truth.  Check  this  lying  hos 
pitality  and  lying  affection.  Live  no  longer  to  the 
expectation  of  these  deceived  and  deceiving  people 
with  whom  we  converse.  Say  to  them,  '  O  father, 

0  mother,  O    wife,  O    brother,  O    friend,   I    have 
lived  with  you  after  appearances  hitherto.     Hence 
forward  I  am  the  truth's.     Be   it  known   unto  you 
that  henceforward  I  obey  no  law  less  than  the  eter 
nal  law.     I  will  have  no  covenants  but  proximities. 

1  shall  endeavor  to  nourish  my  parents,  to   support 
my  family,  to  be  the  chaste  husband  of  one  wife,  — 
but  these  relations  I  must  fill  after  a  new  and  un 
precedented  way.     I  appeal  from  your  customs.     I 
must  be  myself.    I  cannot  break  myself  any  longer 
for  you,  or  you.     If  you  can  love  me  for  what  I 
am,  we   shall  be   the   happier.     If   you   cannot,  I 
will  still  seek  to  deserve  that  you  should.     I  will 
not  hide  my  tastes  or  aversions.     I  will  so  trust 


SELF-RELIANCE.  73 

that  what  is  deep  is  holy,  that  I  will  do  strongly 
before  the  sun  and  moon  whatever  inly  rejoices 
me  and  the  heart  appoints.  If  you  are  noble,  I 
will  love  you :  if  you  are  not,  I  will  not  hurt  you 
and  myself  by  hypocritical  attentions.  If  you  are 
true,  but  not  in  the  same  truth  with  me,  cleave  to 
your  companions  ;  I  will  seek  my  own.  I  do  thif 
not  selfishly  but  humbly  and  truly.  It  is  alike 
your  interest,  and  mine,  and  all  men's,  however 
long  we  have  dwelt  in  lies,  to  live  in  truth.  Does 
this  sound  harsh  to-day  ?  You  will  soon  love  what 
is  dictated  by  your  nature  as  well  as  mine,  and  if 
we  follow  the  truth  it  will  bring  us  out  safe  at 
last.'  —  But  so  may  you  give  these  friends  pain. 
Yes,  but  I  cannot  sell  my  liberty  and  my  power,  to 
save  their  sensibility.  Besides,  all  persons  have 
their  moments  of  reason,  when  they  look  out  into 
the  region  of  absolute  truth  ;  then  will  they  justify 
me  and  do  the  same  thing. 

The  populace  think  that  your  rejection  of  popu 
lar  standards  is  a  rejection  of  all  standard,  and 
mere  antinomianism  ;  and  the  bold  sensualist  will 
use  the  name  of  philosophy  to  gild  his  crimes.  But 
the  law  of  consciousness  abides.  There  are  two 
confessionals,  in  one  or  the  other  of  which  we  must 
be  shriven.  You  may  fulfil  your  round  of  duties 
by  clearing  yourself  in  the  direct-)  or  in  the  reflex 
way.  Consider  whether  you  have  satisfied  your  re- 


74  SELF-RELIANCE. 

lations  to  father,  mother,  cousin,  neighbor,  town, 
cat  and  dog ;  whether  any  of  these  can  upbraid 
you.  But  I  may  also  neglect  this  reflex  standard 
and  absolve  me  to  myself.  I  have  my  own  stern 
claims  and  perfect  circle.  It  denies  the  name  of 
duty  to  many  offices  that  are  called  duties.  But  if 
I  can  discharge  its  debts  it  enables  me  to  dispense 
with  the  popular  code.  If  any  one  imagines  that 
this  law  is  lax,  let  him  keep  its  commandment  one 
day. 

And  truly  it  demands  something  godlike  in  him 
who  has  cast  off  the  common  motives  of  humanity 
and  has  ventured  to  trust  himself  for  a  taskmaster. 
High  be  his  heart,  faithful  his  will,  clear  his  sight, 
that  he  may  in  good  earnest  be  doctrine,  society, 
law,  to  himself,  that  a  simple  purpose  may  be  t(? 
him  as  strong  as  iron  necessity  is  to  others  ! 

If  any  man  consider  the  present  aspects  of  what 
is  called  by  distinction  society,  he  will  see  the  need 
of  these  ethics.  The  sinew  and  heart  of  man  seem 
to  be  drawn  out,  and  we  are  become  timorous,  de 
sponding  whimperers.  We  are  afraid  of  truth, 
afraid  of  fortune,  afraid  of  death  and  afraid  of  each 
other.  Our  age  yields  no  great  and  perfect  per 
sons.  We  want  men  and  women  who  shall  reno 
vate  life  and  our  social  state,  but  we  see  that  most 
natures  are  insolvent,  cannot  satisfy  their  own 
wants,  have  an  ainoition  out  of  all  proportion  to 


SELF-RELIANCE.  75 

their  practical  force  and  do  lean  and  beg  day  and 
night  continually.  Our  housekeeping  is  mendicant, 
our  arts,  our  occupations,  our  marriages,  our  relig 
ion  we  have  not  chosen,  but  society  has  chosen  for 
us.  We  are  parlor  soldiers.  We  shun  the  rugged 
battle  of  fate,  where  strength  is  born. 

If  our  young  men  miscarry  in  their  first  enter 
prises  they  lose  all  heart.  If  the  young  merchant 
fails,  men  say  he  is  ruined.  If  the  finest  genius 
studies  at  one  of  our  colleges  and  is  not  installed  in 
an  office  within  one  year  afterwards  in  the  cities  or 
suburbs  of  Boston  or  New  York,  it  seems  to  his 
friends  and  to  himself  that  he  is  right  in  being  dis 
heartened  and  in  complaining  the  rest  of  his  life. 
A  sturdy  lad  from  New  Hampshire  or  Vermont, 
who  in  turn  tries  all  the  professions,  who  teams  it, 
farms  it,  peddles,  keeps  a  school,  preaches,  edits  a 
newspaper,  goes  to  Congress,  buys  a  township,  and 
so  forth,  in  successive  years,  and  always  like  a  cat 
falls  on  his  feet,  is  worth  a  hundred  of  these  city 
dolls.  He  walks  abreast  with  his  days  and  feels  no 
shame  in  not  'studying  a  profession,'  for  he  does 
not  postpone  his  life,  but  lives  already.  He  has  not 
one  chance,  but  a  hundred  chances.  Let  a  Stoic 
open  the  resources  of  man  and  tell  men  they  are  not 
leaning  willows,  but  can  and  must  detach  them 
selves  ;  that  with  the  exercise  of  self  -  trust,  new 
powers  shall  appear  ;  that  a  man  is  the  word  made 


76  SELF-RELIANCE. 

flesh,  born  to  shed  healing  to  the  nations ;  that  he 
should  be  ashamed  of  our  compassion,  and  that  the 
moment  he  acts  from  himself,  tossing  the  laws,  the 
books,  idolatries  and  customs  out  of  the  window, 
we  pity  him  no  more  but  thank  and  revere  him  ;-— 
and  that  teacher  shall  restore  the  life  of  man  to 
splendor  and  make  his  name  dear  to  all  history. 

It  is  easy  to  see  that  a  greater  self-reliance  must 
work  a  revolution  in  all  the  offices  and  relations  of 
men ;  in  their  religion ;  in  their  education ;  in  their 
pursuits  ;  their  modes  of  living  ;  their  association  ; 
in  their  property ;  in  their  speculative  views. 

1.  In  what  prayers  do  men  allow  themselves  ! 
That  which  they  call  a  holy  office  is  not  so  much  as 
brave  and  manly.  Prayer  looks  abroad  and  asks 
for  some  foreign  addition  to  come  through  some 
foreign  virtue,  and  loses  itself  in  endless  mazes  of 
natural  and  supernatural,  and  mediatorial  and  mi 
raculous.  Prayer  that  craves  a  particular  commod 
ity,  anything  less  than  all  good,  is  vicious.  Prayer 
is  the  contemplation  of  the  facts  of  life  from  the 
highest  point  of  view.  It  is  the  soliloquy  of  a  be 
holding  and  jubilant  soul.  It  is  the  spirit  of  God 
pronouncing  his  works  good.  But  prayer  as  a 
means  to  effect  a  private  end  is  meanness  and  theft 
It  supposes  dualism  and  not  unity  in  nature  and 
consciousness.  As  soon  as  the  man  is  at  one  with 
God,  he  will  not  beg.  He  will  then  see  prayer  in 


SELF-RELIANCE.  77 

all  action.  The  prayer  of  the  farmer  kneeling  in 
his  field  to  weed  it,  the  prayer  of  the  rower  kneel 
ing  with  the  stroke  of  his  oar,  are  true  prayers 
heard  throughout  nature,  though  for  cheap  endsc 
Caratach,  in  Fletcher's  Bonduca,  when  admonished 
to  inquire  the  mind  of  the  god  Audate,  replies,  — • 

"  His  hidden  meaning  lies  in  our  endeavors  ; 
Our  valors  are  our  best  gods." 

Another  sort  of  false  prayers  are  our  regrets. 
Discontent  is  the  want  of  self-reliance :  it  is  infirm 
ity  of  will.  Regret  calamities  if  you  can  thereby 
help  the  sufferer ;  if  not,  attend  your  own  work  and 
already  the  evil  begins  to  be  repaired.  Our  sym 
pathy  is  just  as  base.  We  come  to  them  who  weep 
foolishly  and  sit  down  and  cry  for  company,  in 
stead  of  imparting  to  them  truth  and  health  in 
rough  electric  shocks,  putting  them  once  more  in 
communication  with  their  own  reason.  The  secret 
of  fortune  is  joy  in  our  hands.  Welcome  evermore 
to  gods  and  men  is  the  self-helping  man.  For  him 
all  doors  are  flung  wide  ;  him  all  tongues  greet,  all 
honors  crown,  all  eyes  follow  with  desire.  Our 
love  goes  out  to  him  and  embraces  him  because  he 
did  not  need  it.  We  solicitously  and  apologetically 
caress  and  celebrate  him  because  he  held  on  his 
way  and  scorned  our  disapprobation.  The  gods 
love  him  because  men  hated  him.  "  To  the  perser 


78  SELF-RELIANCE. 

vering  mortal,"   said  Zoroaster,  "the  blessed  Im 
mortals  are  swift." 

As  men's  prayers  are  a  disease  of  the  will,  so 
are  their  creeds  a  disease  of  the  intellect.  They  say 
with  those  foolish  Israelites,  '  Let  not  God  speak 
to  us,  lest  we  die.  Speak  thou,  speak  any  man 
with  us,  and  we  will  obey.'  Everywhere  I  am  hin 
dered  of  meeting  God  in  my  brother,  because  he  has 
shut  his  own  temple  doors  and  recites  fables  mere 
ly  of  his  brother's,  or  his  brother's  brother's  God. 
Every  new  mind  is  a  new  classification.  If  it  prove 
a  mind  of  uncommon  activity  and  power,  a  Locke, 
a  Lavoisier,  a  Hutton,  a  Bentharn,  a  Fourier,  it  im 
poses  its  classification  on  other  men,  and  lo  !  a  new 
system.  In  proportion  to  the  depth  of  the  thought, 
and  so  to  the  number  of  the  objects  it  touches 
and  brings  within  reach  of  the  pupil,  is  his  compla 
cency.  But  chiefly  is  this  apparent  in  creeds  and 
churches,  which  are  also  classifications  of  some  pow 
erful  mind  acting  on  the  elemental  thought  of  duty 
and  man's  relation  to  the  Highest.  Such  is  Cal 
vinism,  Quakerism,  Swedenborgism.  The  pupil 
takes  the  same  delight  in  subordinating  every  thing 
to  the  new  terminology  as  a  girl  who  has  just 
learned  botany  in  seeing  a  new  earth  and  new  sea 
sons  thereby.  It  will  happen  for  a  time  that  the 
pupil  will  find  his  intellectual  power  has  grown  by 
the  study  of  his  master's  mind.  But  in  all  unbak 


SELF-RELIANCE.  79 

anced  minds  the  classification  is  idolized,  passes  for 
the  end  and  not  for  a  speedily  exhaustible  means, 
so  that  the  walls  of  the  system  blend  to  their  eye 
in  the  remote  horizon  with  the  walls  of  the  uni 
verse  ;  the  luminaries  of  heaven  seem  to  them  hung 
on  the  arch  their  master  built.  They  cannot  imag 
ine  how  you  aliens  have  any  right  to  see,  —  how 
you  can  see ;  '  It  must  be  somehow  that  you  stole 
the  light  from  us.'  They  do  not  yet  perceive  that 
light,  unsystematic,  indomitable,  will  break  into 
any  cabin,  even  into  theirs.  Let  them  chirp  awhile 
and  call  it  their  own.  If  they  are  honest  and  do 
well,  presently  their  neat  new  pinfold  will  be  too 
strait  and  low,  will  crack,  will  lean,  will  rot  and 
vanish,  and  the  immortal  light,  all  young  and  joy 
ful,  million-orbed,  million-colored,  will  beam  over 
the  universe  as  on  the  first  morning. 

2.  It  is  for  want  of  self -culture  that  the  super 
stition  of  Travelling,  whose  idols  are  Italy,  Eng 
land,  Egypt,  retains  its  fascination  for  all  educa 
ted  Americans.  They  who  made  England,  Italy, 
or  Greece  venerable  in  the  imagination,  did  so  by 
sticking  fast  where  they  were,  like  an  axis  of  the 
earth.  In  manly  hours  we  feel  that  duty  is  our 
place.  The  soul  is  no  traveller ;  the  wise  man 
stays  at  home,  and  when  his  necessities,  his  duties, 
on  any  occasion  call  him  from  his  house,  or  into  for 
eign  lands,  he  is  at  home  still  and  shall  make  men 


80  SELF-RELIANCE. 

sensible  by  the  expression  of  his  countenance  that 
he  goes,  the  missionary  of  wisdom  and  virtue,  and 
visits  cities  and  men  like  a  sovereign  and  not  like 
an  interloper  or  a  valet. 

I  have  no  churlish  objection  to  the  circumnaviga 
tion  of  the  globe  for  the  purposes  of  art,  of  study, 
and  benevolence,  so  that  the  man  is  first  domesti 
cated,  or  does  not  go  abroad  with  the  hope  of  finding 
somewhat  greater  than  he  knows.  He  who  travels 
to  be  amused,  or  to  get  somewhat  which  he  does 
not  carry,  travels  away  from  himself,  and  grows  old 
even  in  youth  among  old  things.  In  Thebes,  in 
Palmyra,  his  will  and  mind  have  become  old  and 
dilapidated  as  they.  He  carries  ruins  to  ruins. 

Travelling  is  a  fool's  paradise.  Our  first  jour 
neys  discover  to  us  the  indifference  of  places.  At 
home  I  dream  that  at  Naples,  at  Rome,  I  can  be  in 
toxicated  with  beauty  and  lose  my  sadness.  I  pack 
my  trunk,  embrace  my  friends,  embark  on  the  sea 
and  at  last  wake  up  in  Naples,  and  there  beside  me 
is  the  stern  fact,  the  sad  self,  unrelenting,  identi 
cal,  that  I  fled  from.  I  seek  the  Vatican  and  the 
palaces.  I  affect  to  be  intoxicated  with  sights  and 
suggestions,  but  I  am  not  intoxicated.  My  giant 
goes  with  me  wherever  I  go. 

3.  But  the  rage  of  travelling  is  a  symptom  of  a 
deeper  unsoundness  affecting  the  whole  intellectual 
action.  The  intellect  is  vagabond,  and  our  system 


SELF-RELIANCE.  81 

of  education  fosters  restlessness.  Our  minds  travel 
when  our  bodies  are  forced  to  stay  at  home.  We 
imitate  ;  and  what  is  imitation  but  the  travelling  of 
the  mind  ?  Our  houses  are  built  with  foreign 
taste ;  our  shelves  are  garnished  with  foreign  orna 
ments  ;  our  opinions,  our  tastes,  our  faculties,  lean, 
and  follow  the  Past  and  the  Distant.  The  soul  cre 
ated  the  arts  wherever  they  have  flourished.  It  was 
in  his  own  mind  that  the  artist  sought  his  model. 
It  was  an  application  of  his  own  thought  to  the 
thing  to  be  done  and  the  conditions  to  be  observed. 
And  why  need  we  copy  the  Doric  or  the  Gothic 
model  ?  Beauty,  convenience,  grandeur  of  thought 
and  quaint  expression  are  as  near  to  us  as  to  any, 
and  if  the  American  artist  will  study  with  hope 
and  love  the  precise  thing  to  be  done  by  him,  con 
sidering  the  climate,  the  soil,  the  length  of  the  day, 
the  wants  of  the  people,  the  habit  and  form  of  the 
government,  he  will  create  a  house  in  which  all 
these  will  find  themselves  fitted,  and  taste  and  sen 
timent  will  be  satisfied  also. 

Insist  on  yourself ;  never  imitate.  Your  own 
gift  you  can  present  every  moment  with  the  cumu 
lative  force  of  a  whole  life's  cultivation  ;  but  of  the 
adopted  talent  of  another  you  have  only  an  extem 
poraneous  half  possession.  That  which  each  can 
do  best,  none  but  his  Maker  can  teach  him.  No 
man  yet  knows  what  it  is,  nor  can,  till  that  person 


VOL.   II. 


82  SELF-RELIANCE. 

has  exhibited  it.  Where  is  the  master  who  could 
have  taught  Shakspeare  ?  Where  is  the  master 
who  could  have  instructed  Franklin,  or  Washing 
ton,  or  Bacon,  or  NeWton  ?  Every  great  man  is 
a  unique.  The  Scipionism  of  Scipio  is  precisely 
that  part  he  could  not  borrow.  Shakspeare  will 
never  be  made  by  the  study  of  Shakspeare.  Do 
that  which  is  assigned  you,  and  you  cannot  hope 
too  much  or  dare  too  much.  There  is  at  this  mo 
ment  for  you  an  utterance  brave  and  grand  as  that 
of  the  colossal  chisel  of  Phidias,  or  trowel  of  the 
Egyptians,  or  the  pen  of  Moses  or  Dante,  but  dif 
ferent  from  all  these.  Not  possibly  will  the  soul, 
all  rich,  all  eloquent,  with  thousand-cloven  tongue, 
deign  to  repeat  itself;  but  if  you  can  hear  what 
these  patriarchs  say,  surely  you  can  reply  to  them 
in  the  same  pitch  of  voice  ;  for  the  ear  and  the 
tongue  are  two  organs  of  one  nature.  Abide  in 
the  simple  and  noble  regions  of  thy  life,  obey  thy 
heart  and  thou  shalt  reproduce  the  Foreworld 
again. 

4.  As  our  Religion,  our  Education,  our  Art  look 
abroad,  so  does  our  spirit  of  society.  All  men 
plume  themselves  on  the  improvement  of  society, 
and  no  man  improves. 

Society  never  advances.  It  recedes  as  fast  on 
one  side  as  it  gains  on  the  other.  It  undergoes 
continual  changes ;  it  is  barbarous,  it  is  civilized,  it 


SELF-RELIANCE.  83 

is  christianized,  it  is  rich,  it  is  scientific  ;  but  this 
change  is  not  amelioration.  For  every  thing  that 
is  given  something  is  taken.  Society  acquires  new 
arts  and  loses  old  instincts.  What  a  contrast  be 
tween  the  well -clad,  reading,  writing,  thinking 
American,  with  a  watch,  a  pencil  and  a  bill  of  ex 
change  in  his  pocket,  and  the  naked  New  Zea- 
lander,  whose  property  is  a  club,  a  spear,  a  mat 
and  an  undivided  twentieth  of  a  shed  to  sleep  un 
der  !  But  compare  the  health  of  the  two  men  and 
you  shall  see  that  the  white  man  has  lost  his  abo 
riginal  strength.  If  the  traveller  tell  us  truly, 
strike  the  savage  with  a  broad  axe  and  in  a  day  or 
two  the  flesh  shall  unite  and  heal  as  if  you  struck 
the  blow  into  soft  pitch,  and  the  same  blow  shall 
send  the  white  to  his  grave. 

The  civilized  man  has  built  a  coach,  but  has  lost 
the  use  of  his  feet.  He  is  supported  on  crutches, 
but  lacks  so  much  support  of  muscle.  He  has  a 
fine  Geneva  watch,  but  he  fails  of  the  skill  to  tell 
the  hour  by  the  sun.  A  Greenwich  nautical  alma 
nac  he  has,  and  so  being  sure  of  the  information 
when  he  wants  it,  the  man  in  the  street  does  not 
know  a  star  in  the  sky.  The  solstice  he  does  not 
observe ;  the  equinox  he  knows  as  little  ;  and  the 
whole  bright  calendar  of  the  year  is  without  a  dial 
in  his  mind.  His  note-books  impair  his  memory ; 
his  libraries  overload  his  wit ;  the  insurance-office 


84  SELF-RELIANCE. 

increases  the  number  of  accidents ;  and  it  may  be  a 
question  whether  machinery  does  not  encumber; 
whether  we  have  not  lost  by  refinement  some  en 
ergy,  by  a  Christianity  entrenched  in  establish 
ments  and  forms  some  vigor  of  wild  virtue.  For 
every  Stoic  was  a  Stoic  ;  but  in  Christendom  where 
is  the  Christian? 

There  is  no  more  deviation  in  the  moral  standard 
than  in  the  standard  of  height  or  bulk.  No  greater 
men  are  now  than  ever  were.  A  singular  equality 
may  be  observed  between  the  great  men  of  the  first 
and  of  the  last  ages  ;  nor  can  all  the  science,  art,  re 
ligion,  and  philosophy  of  the  nineteenth  century 
avail  to  educate  greater  men  than  Plutarch's  he 
roes,  three  or  four  and  twenty  centuries  ago.  Not 
in  time  is  the  race  progressive.""/  Phocion,  Socrates, 
Anaxagoras,  Diogenes,  are  great  men,  but  they 
leave  no  class.  He  who  is  really  of  their  class  will 
not  be  called  by  their  name,  but  will  be  his  own 
man,  and  in  his  turn  the  founder  of  a  sect.  The 
arts  and  inventions  of  each  period  are  only  its  cos 
tume  and  do  not  invigorate  men.  The  harm  of  the 
improved  machinery  may  compensate  its  good. 
Hudson  and  Behring  accomplished  so  much  in 
their  fishing-boats  as  to  astonish  Parry  and  Frank 
lin,  whose  equipment  exhausted  the  resources  of 
science  and  art.  Galileo,  with  an  opera-glass,  dis 
covered  a  more  splendid  series  of  celestial  phenom« 


SELF-RELIANCE.  85 

ena  than  any  one  since.  Columbus  found  the  New 
World  in  an  undecked  boat.  It  is  curious  to  see 
the  periodical  disuse  and  perishing  of  means  and 
machinery  which  were  introduced  with  loud  lauda 
tion  a  few  years  or  centuries  before.  JThe  great 
genius  returns  to  essential  man.  We  reckoned  the 
improvements  of  the  art  of  war  among  the  tri 
umphs  of  science,  and  yet  Napoleon  conquered 
Europe  by  the  bivouac,  which  consisted  of  falling 
back  on  naked  valor  and  disencumbering  it  of  all 
aids.  The  Emperor  held  it  impossible  to  make  a 
perfect  army,  says  Las  Casas,  "  without  abolishing 
our  arms,  magazines,  commissaries  and  carriages, 
until,  in  imitation  of  the  Roman  custom,  the  soldier 
should  receive  his  supply  of  corn,  grind  it  in  his 
hand-mill  and  bake  his  bread  himself." 

Society  is  a  wave.  The  wave  moves  onward, 
but  the  water  of  which  it  is  composed  does  not. 
The  same  particle  does  not  rise  from  the  valley  to 
the  ridge.  Its  unity  is  only  phenomenal.  The 
persons  who  make  up  a  nation  to-day,  next  year 
die,  and  their  experience  dies  with  them. 

And  so  the  reliance  on  Property,  including  the 
reliance  on  governments  which  protect  it,  is  the 
want  of  self-reliance.  Men  have  looked  away  from 
themselves  and  at  things  so  long  that  they  have 
come  to  esteem  the  religious,  learned  and  civil  in 
stitutions  as  guards  of  property,  and  they  depre- 


86  SELF-RELIANCE. 

cate  assaults  on  these,  because  they  feel  them  to  be 
assaults  on  property.  They  measure  their  es 
teem  of  each  other  by  what  each  has,  and  not  by 
what  each  is.  But  a  cultivated  man  becomes 
ashamed  of  his  property,  out  of  new  respect  for  his 
nature.  Especially  he  hates  what  he  has  if  he  see 
that  it  is  accidental, —  came  to  him  by  inheritance, 
or  gift,  or  crime  ;  then  he  feels  that  it  is  not  having ; 
it  does  not  belong  to  him,  has  no  root  in  him  and 
merely  lies  there  because  no  revolution  or  no  robber 
takes  it  away.  But  that  which  a  man  is,  does  al 
ways  by  necessity  acquire ;  and  what  the  man  ac 
quires,  is  living  property,  which  does  not  wait  the 
beck  of  rulers,  or  mobs,  or  revolutions,  or  fire,  or 
storm,  or  bankruptcies,  but  perpetually  renews  itself 
wherever  the  man  breathes.  "  Thy  lot  or  portion 
of  life,"  said  the  Caliph  Ali,  "  is  seeking  after  thee ; 
therefore  be  at  rest  from  seeking  after  it."  Our 
dependence  on  these  foreign  goods  leads  us  to  our 
slavish  respect  for  numbers.  The  political  parties 
meet  in  numerous  conventions  ;  the  greater  the  con 
course  and  with  each  new  uproar  of  announcement, 
The  delegation  from  Essex  !  The  Democrats  from 
New  Hampshire  !  The  Whigs  of  Maine !  the  young 
patriot  feels  himself  stronger  than  before  by  a  new 
thousand  of  eyes  and  arms.  In  like  manner  the  re 
formers  summon  conventions  and  vote  and  resolve 
in  multitude.  Not  so  O  friends!  will  the 


SELF-RELIANCE.  87 

deign  to  enter  and  inhabit  you,  but  by  a  method 
precisely  the  reverse.  It  is  only  as  a  man  puts  off 
all  foreign  support  and  stands  alone  that  I  see  him 
to  be  strong  and  to  prevail.  He  is  weaker  by  every 
recruit  to  his  banner.  Is  not  a  man  better  than  a 
town  ?  Ask  nothing  of  men,  and,  in  the  endless 
mutation,  thou  only  firm  column  must  presently  ap 
pear  the  upholder  of  all  that  surrounds  thee.  He 
who  knows  that  power  is  inborn,  that  he  is  weak  be 
cause  he  has  looked  for  good  out  of  him  and  else 
where,  and,  so  perceiving,  throws  himself  unhesitat 
ingly  on  his  thought,  instantly  rights  himself,  stands 
in  the  erect  position,  commands  his  limbs,  works 
miracles ;  just  as  a  man  who  stands  on  his  feet  is 
stronger  than  a  man  who  stands  on  his  head.  , 

So  use  all  that  is  called  Fortune.  Most  men 
gamble  with  her,  and  gain  all,  and  lose  all,  as  her 
wheel  rolls.  But  do  thou  leave  as  unlawful  these 
winnings,  and  deal  with  Cause  and  Effect,  the  chan 
cellors  of  God.  In  the  Will  work  and  acquire,  and 
thou  hast  chained  the  wheel  of  Chance,  and  shalt  sit 
hereafter  out  of  fear  from  her  rotations.  A  politi 
cal  victory,  a  rise  of  rents,  the  recovery  of  your  sick 
or  the  return  of  your  absent  friend,  or  some  other 
favorable  event  raises  your  spirits,  and  you  think 
good  days  are  preparing  for  you.  Do  not  believe 
it.  Nothing  can  bring  you  peace  but  yourself. 
Nothing  can  bring  you  peace  but  the  triumph  of 
principles. 


COMPENSATION. 


THE  wings  of  Time  are  black  and  white, 
Pied  with  morning  and  with  night. 
Mountain  tall  and  ocean  deep 
Trembling  balance  duly  keep. 
In  changing  moon,  in  tidal  wave, 
Glows  the  feud  of  Want  and  Have. 
Gauge  of  more  and  less  through  space 
Electric  star  and  pencil  plays. 
The  lonely  Earth  amid  the  balls 
That  hurry  through  the  eternal  halls, 
A  makeweight  flying  to  the  void, 
Supplemental  asteroid, 
Or  compensatory  spark, 
Shoots  across  the  neutral  Dark. 


Man  's  the  elm,  and  Wealth  the  vine, 
Stanch  and  strong  the  tendrils  twine : 
Though  the  frail  ringlets  thee  deceive. 
None  from  its  stock  that  vine  can  reave. 
Fear  not,  then,  thou  child  infirm, 
There  's  no  god  dare  wrong  a  worm. 
Laurel  crowns  cleave  to  deserts 
And  power  to  him  who  power  exerts  ; 
Hast  not  thy  share  ?     On  winged  feet,, 
Lo !  it  rushes  thee  to  meet ; 
And  all  that  Nature  made  thy  own, 
Floating  in  air  or  pent  in  stone, 
Will  rive  the  hills  and  swim  the  sea 
And,  like  thy  shadow,  follow  thee. 


III. 

COMPENSATION. 


EVER  since  I  was  a  boy  I  have  wished  to  write  a 
discourse  on  Compensation ;  for  it  seemed  to  me 
when  very  young  that  on  this  subject  life  was  ahead 
of  theology  and  the  people  knew  more  than  the 
preachers  taught.  The  documents  too  from  which 
the  doctrine  is  to  be  drawn,  charmed  my  fancy  by 
their  endless  variety,  and  lay  always  before  me, 
even  in  sleep ;  for  they  are  the  tools  in  our  hands, 
the  bread  in  our  basket,  the  transactions  of  the 
street,  the  farm  and  the  dwelling-house  ;  greetings, 
relations,  debts  and  credits,  the  influence  of  char 
acter,  the  nature  and  endowment  of  all  men.  It 
seemed  to  me  also  that  in  it  might  be  shown  men 
a  ray  of  divinity,  the  present  action  of  the  soul  of 
this  world,  clean  from  all  vestige  of  tradition ;  and 
so  the  heart  of  man  might  be  bathed  by  an  inun 
dation  of  eternal  love,  conversing  with  that  which 
he  knows  was  always  and  always  must  be,  because 
it  really  is  now.  It  appeared  moreover  that  if  this 
doctrine  could  be  stated  in  terms  with  any  resem- 


92  COMPENSATION. 

blance  to  those  bright  intuitions  in  which  this  truth 
is  sometimes  revealed  to  us,  it  would  be  a  star  in 
many  dark  hours  and  crooked  passages  in  our  jour 
ney,  that  would  not  suffer  us  to  lose  our  way. 

I  was  lately  confirmed  in  these  desires  by  hear 
ing  a  sermon  at  church.  The  preacher,  a  man  es» 
teemed  for  his  orthodoxy,  unfolded  in  the  ordinary 
manner  the  doctrine  of  the  Last  Judgment.  He 
assumed  that  judgment  is  not  executed  in  this  world ; 
that  the  wicked  are  successful ;  that  the  good  are 
miserable ;  and  then  urged  from  reason  and  from 
Scripture  a  compensation  to  be  made  to  both  par 
ties  in  the  next  life.  No  offence  appeared  to  be 
taken  by  the  congregation  at  this  doctrine.  As  far 
as  I  could  observe  when  the  meeting  broke  up  they 
separated  without  remark  on  the  sermon. 

Yet  what  was  the  import  »f  this  teaching  ?  What 
did  the  preacher  mean  by  saying  that  the  good  are 
miserable  in  the  present  life  ?  Was  it  that  houses 
and  lands,  offices,  wine,  horses,  dress,  luxury,  are 
had  by  unprincipled  men,  whilst  the  saints  are  poor 
and  despised ;  and  that  a  compensation  is  to  be  made 
to  these  last  hereafter,  by  giving  them  the  like  grati 
fications  another  day,  —  bank-stock  and  doubloons, 
venison  and  champagne  ?  This  must  be  the  com 
pensation  intended  ;  for  what  else  ?  is  it  that  they 
are  to  have  leave  to  pray  and  praise  ?  to  love  and 
serve  men  ?  Why,  that  they  can  do  now.  The 


COMPENSATION.  93 

legitimate  inference  the  disciple  would  draw  was,  — - 
*  We  are  to  have  such  a  good  time  as  the  sinners 
have  now ' ;  —  or,  to  push  it  to  its  extreme  import, 
• — '  You  sin  now,  we  shall  sin  by  and  by ;  we  would 
sin  now,  if  we  could  ;  not  being  successful  we  ex 
pect  our  revenge  to-morrow.' 

The  fallacy  lay  in  the  immense  concession  that 
the  bad  are  successful ;  that  justice  is  not  done  now. 
The  blindness  of  the  preacher  consisted  in  defer 
ring  to  the  base  estimate  of  the  market  of  what  con 
stitutes  a  manly  success,  instead  of  confronting  and 
convicting  the  world  from  the  truth ;  announcing 
the  presence  of  the  soul ;  the  omnipotence  of  the 
will ;  and  so  establishing  the  standard  of  good  and 
ill,  of  success  and  falsehood. 

I  find  a  similar  base  tone  in  the  popular  religious 
works  of  the  day  and  the  same  doctrines  assumed 
by  the  literary  men  when  occasionally  they  treat  the 
related  topics.  I  think  that  our  popular  theology 
has  gained  in  decorum,  and  not  in  principle,  over 
the  superstitions  it  has  displaced.  But  men  are 
better  than  their  theology.  Their  daily  life  gives 
it  the  lie.  Every  ingenuous  and  aspiring  soul  leaves 
the  doctrine  behind  him  in  his  own  experience,  and 
all  men  feel  sometimes  the  falsehood  which  they 
cannot  demonstrate.  For  men  are  wiser  than  they 
know.  That  which  they  hear  in  schools  and  pulpits 
without  afterthought,  if  said  in  conversation  would 


94  COMPENSATION. 

probably  be  questioned  in  silence.  If  a  man  dog 
matize  in  a  mixed  company  on  Providence  and  the 
divine  laws,  he  is  answered  by  a  silence  which  con 
veys  well  enough  to  an  observer  the  dissatisfaction 
of  the  hearer,  but  his  incapacity  to  make  his  own 
statement. 

I  shall  attempt  in  this  and  the  following  chapter 
to  record  some  facts  that  indicate  the  path  of  the 
law  of  Compensation  ;  happy  beyond  my  expecta 
tion  if  I  shall  truly  draw  the  smallest  arc  of  this 
circle. 

POLARITY,  or  action  and  reaction,  we  meet  in 
every  part  of  nature  ;  in  darkness  and  light ;  in 
heat  and  cold ;  in  the  ebb  and  flow  of  waters  ;  in 
male  and  female  ;  in  the  inspiration  and  expiration 
of  plants  and  animals  ;  in  the  equation  of  quantity 
and  quality  in  the  fluids  of  the  animal  body ;  in  the 
systole  and  diastole  of  the  heart ;  in  the  undulations 
of  fluids  and  of  sound  ;  in  the  centrifugal  and  cen 
tripetal  gravity ;  in  electricity,  galvanism,  and  chem 
ical  affinity.  Superinduce  magnetism  at  one  end 
of  a  needle,  the  opposite  magnetism  takes  place  at 
the  other  end.  If  the  south  attracts,  the  north  re 
pels.  To  empty  here,  you  must  condense  there. 
An  inevitable  dualism  bisects  nature,  so  that  each 
thing  is  a  half,  and  suggests  another  thing  to  make 
it  whole ;  as,  spirit,  matter ;  man,  woman ;  odd* 


COMPENSATION.  95 

even;  subjective,  objective;  in,  out;  upper,  under; 
motion,  rest ;  yea,  nay. 

Whilst  the  world  is  thus  dual,  so  is  every  one  of 
its  parts.  The  entire  system  of  things  gets  repre^ 
sented  in  every  particle.  There  is  somewhat  that 
resembles  the  ebb  and  flow  of  the  sea,  day  and 
night,  man  and  woman,  in  a  single  needle  of  the 
pine,  in  a  kernel  of  corn,  in  each  individual  of  every 
animal  tribe.  The  reaction,  so  grand  in  the  ele 
ments,  is  repeated  within  these  small  boundaries. 
For  example,  in  the  animal  kingdom  the  physiolo 
gist  has  observed  that  no  creatures  are  favorites, 
but  a  certain  compensation  balances  every  gift  and 
every  defect.  A  surplusage  given  to  one  part  is 
paid  out  of  a  reduction  from  another  part  of  the 
same  creature.  If  the  head  and  neck  are  enlarged, 
the  trunk  and  extremities  are  cut  short. 

The  theory  of  the  mechanic  forces  is  another  ex 
ample.  What  we  gain  in  power  is  lost  in  time,  and 
the  converse.  The  periodic  or  compensating  errors 
of  the  planets  is  another  instance.  The  influences 
of  climate  and  soil  in  political  history  is  another. 
The  cold  climate  invigorates.  The  barren  soil  does 
not  breed  fevers,  crocodiles,  tigers  or  scorpions. 

The  same  dualism  underlies  the  nature  and  con 
dition  of  man.  Every  excess  causes  a  defect;  every 
defect  an  excess.  Every  sweet  hath  its  sour  ;  every 
evil  its  good.  Every  faculty  which  is  a  receiver  ol 


96  COMPENSATION. 

pleasure  has  an  equal  penalty  put  on  its  abuse.  It 
is  to  answer  for  its  moderation  with  its  life.  For 
every  grain  of  wit  there  is  a  grain  of  folly.  For 
every  thing  you  have  missed,  you  have  gained  some 
thing  else  ;  and  for  every  thing  you  gain,  you  lose 
something.  If  riches  increase,  they  are  increased 
that  use  them.  If  the  gatherer  gathers  too  much, 
Nature  takes  out  of  the  man  what  she  puts  into  his 
chest ;  swells  the  estate,  but  kills  the  owner.  Na 
ture  hates  monopolies  and  exceptions.  The  waves 
of  the  sea  do  not  more  speedily  seek  a  level  from 
their  loftiest  tossing  than  the  varieties  of  condition 
tend  to  equalize  themselves.  There  is  always  some 
levelling  circumstance  that  puts  down  the  overbear 
ing,  the  strong,  the  rich,  the  fortunate,  substantially 
on  the  same  ground  with  all  others.  Is  a  man  too 
strong  and  fierce  for  society  and  by  temper  and 
position  a  bad  citizen,  —  a  morose  ruffian,  with  a 
dash  of  the  pirate  in  him  ?  —  Nature  sends  him  a 
troop  of  pretty  sons  and  daughters  who  are  getting 
along  in  the  dame's  classes  at  the  village  school, 
and  love  and  fear  for  them  smooths  his  grim  scowl 
to  courtesy.  Thus  she  contrives  to  inteneratc  the 
granite  and  felspar,  takes  the  boar  out  and  puts 
the  lamb  in  and  keeps  her  balance  true. 

The  farmer  imagines  power  and  place  are  fine 
things.  But  the  President  has  paid  dear  for  his 
White  House.  It  has  commonly  cost  him  all  his 


COMPENSATION.  97 

peace,  and  the  best  of  his  manly  attributes.  To 
preserve  for  a  short  time  so  conspicuous  an  appear 
ance  before  the  world,  he  is  content  to  eat  dust  be 
fore  the  real  masters  who  stand  erect  behind  the 
throne.  Or  do  men  desire  the  more  substantial  and 
permanent  grandeur  of  genius  ?  Neither  has  this  an 
immunity.  He  who  by  force  of  will  or  of  thought 
is  great  and  overlooks  thousands,  has  the  charges  of 
that  eminence.  With  every  influx  of  light  comes 
new  danger.  Has  he  light  ?  he  must  bear  witness 
to  the  light,  and  always  outrun  that  sympathy 
which  gives  him  such  keen  satisfaction,  by  his  fidel 
ity  to  new  revelations  of  the  incessant  soul.  He 
must  hate  father  and  mother,  wife  and  child.  Has 
he  all  that  the  world  loves  and  admires  and  covets  ? 
—  he  must  cast  behind  him  their  admiration,  and 
afflict  them  by  faithfulness  to  his  truth,  and  become 
a  byword  and  a  hissing. 

This  law  writes  the  laws  of  cities  and  nations.  It 
is  in  vain  to  build  or  plot  or  combine  against  it. 
Things  refuse  to  be  mismanaged  long.  Res  nolunt 
diu  male  administrari.  Though  no  checks  to  a 
new  evil  appear,  the  checks  exist,  and  will  appear. 
If  the  government  is  cruel,  the  governor's  life  is  not 
safe.  If  you  tax  too  high,  the  revenue  will  yield 
nothing.  If  you  make  the  criminal  code  sanguin 
ary,  juries  will  not  convict.  If  the  law  is  too  mild, 
private  vengeance  comes  in,  If  the  government  is 

VOL.   II.  7 


98  COMPENSATION. 

a  terrific  democracy,  the  pressure  is  resisted  by  an 
over-charge  of  energy  in  the  citizen,  and  life  glows 
with  a  fiercer  flame.  The  true  life  and  satisfac 
tions  of  man  seem  to  elude  the  utmost  rigors  or  feli 
cities  of  condition  and  to  establish  themselves  with 
great  indifferency  under  all  varieties  of  circum 
stances.  Under  all  governments  the  influence  of 
character  remains  the  same,  — in  Turkey  and  in 
New  England  about  alike.  Under  the  primeval  de 
spots  of  Egypt,  history  honestly  confesses  that  man 
must  have  been  as  free  as  culture  could  make  him. 
These  appearances  indicate  the  fact  that  the  uni 
verse  is  represented  in  every  one  of  its  particles. 
Every  thing  in  nature  contains  all  the  powers  of 
nature.  Every  thing  is  made  of  one  hidden  stuff  , 
as  the  naturalist  sees  one  type  under  every  meta 
morphosis,  and  regards  a  horse  as  a  running  man, 
a  fish  as  a  swimming  man,  a  bird  as  a  flying  man, 
a  tree  as  a  rooted  man.  Each  new  form  repeats 
not  only  the  main  character  of  the  type,  but  part 
for  part  all  the  details,  all  the  aims,  furtherances, 
hindrances,  energies  and  whole  system  of  every 
other.  Every  occupation,  trade,  art,  transaction,  is 
a  compend  of  the  world  and  a  correlative  of  every 
other.  Each  one  is  an  entire  emblem  of  human 
life ;  of  its  good  and  ill,  its  trials,  its  enemies,  its 
course  and  its  end.  And  each  one  must  somehow 
accommodate  the  whole  man  and  recite  all  his 
destiny. 


COMPENSATION.  99 

The  world  globes  itself  in  a  drop  of  dew.  The 
microscope  cannot  find  the  animalcule  which  is  less 
perfect  for  being  little.  Eyes,  ears,  taste,  smell, 
motion,  resistance,  appetite,  and  organs  of  repro 
duction  that  take  hold  on  eternity,  —  all  find  room 
to  consist  in  the  small  creature.  So  do  we  put  our 
life  into  every  act.  The  true  doctrine  of  omnipres 
ence  is  that  God  reappears  with  all  his  parts  in 
every  moss  and  cobweb.  The  value  of  the  universe 
contrives  to  throw  itself  into  every  point.  If  the 
good  is  there,  so  is  the  evil ;  if  the  laffinity,  so  the 
repulsion ;  if  the  force,  so  the  limitation. 

Thus  is  the  universe  alive.  All  things  are  moral. 
That  soul  which  within  us  is  a  sentiment,  outside  of 
us  is  a  law.  We  feel  its  inspiration  ;  out  there  in 
history  we  can  see  its  fatal  strength.  "  It  is  in  the 
world,  and  the  world  was  made  by  it."  Justice  i& 
not  postponed.  A  perfect  equity  adjusts  its  bal 
ance  in  all  parts  of  life.  Oi  Kvftoi  Aios  cUt  evTriVroucn, 
—  The  dice  of  God  are  always  loaded.  The  world 
looks  like  a  multiplication-table,  or  a  mathematical 
equation,  which,  turn  it  how  you  will,  balances  itself. 
Take  what  figure  you  will,  its  exact  value,  nor  more 
nor  less,  still  returns  to  you.  Every  secret  is  told, 
every  crime  is  punished,  every  virtue  rewarded, 
every  wrong  redressed,  in  silence  and  certainty. 
What  we  call  retribution  is  the  universal  necessity 
by  which  the  whole  appears  wherever  a  part  ap-= 


100  COMPENSA  TION. 

pears.  If  you  see  smoke,  there  must  be  fire.  If 
you  see  a  hand  or  a  limb,  you  know  that  the  trunk 
to  which  it  belongs  is  there  behind. 

Every  act  rewards  itself,  or  in  other  words  inte 
grates  itself,  in  a  twofold  manner ;  first  in  the  thing, 
or  in  real  nature  ;  and  secondly  in  the  circumstance, 
or  in  apparent  nature.  Men  call  the  circumstance 
the  retribution.  The  causal  retribution  is  in  the 
thing  and  is  seen  by  the  soul.  The  retribution  in 
the  circumstance  is  seen  by  the  understanding  ;  it  is 
inseparable  frmn  the  thing,  but  is  often  spread  over 
a  long  time  and  so  does  not  become  distinct  until 
after  many  years.  The  specific  stripes  may  follow 
late  after  the  offence,  but  they  follow  because  they 
accompany  it.  Crime  and  punishment  grow  out  of 
one  stem.  Punishment  is  a  fruit  that  unsuspected 
ripens  within  the  flower  of  the  pleasure  which  con 
cealed  it.  Cause  and  effect,  means  and  ends,  seed 
and  fruit,  cannot  be  severed ;  for  the  effect  already 
blooms  in  the  cause,  the  end  preexists  in  the  means, 
the  fruit  in  the  seed. 

Whilst  thus  the  world  will  be  whole  and  refuses 
to  be  disparted,  we  seek  to  act  partially,  to  sunder, 
to  appropriate  ;  for  example, —  to  gratify  the  senses 
we  sever  the  pleasure  of  the  senses  from  the  needs 
of  the  character.  The  ingenuity  of  man  has  always 
been  dedicated  to  the  solution  of  one  problem,  — 
how  to  detach  the  sensual  sweet,  the  sensual  strong, 


COMPENSATION.  101 

fche  sensual  bright,  etc.,  from  the  moral  sweet,  the 
moral  deep,  the  moral  fair;  that  is,  again,  to  con 
trive  to  cut  clean  off  this  upper  surface  so  thin  as 
to  leave  it  bottomless ;  to  get  a  one  end,  without  an 
other  end.  The  soul  says,  '  Eat ; '  the  body  would 
feast.  The  soul  says,  '  The  man  and  woman  shall 
be  one  flesh  and  one  soul ; '  the  body  would  join  the 
flesh  only.  The  soul  says,  4  Have  dominion  over 
all  things  to  the  ends  of  virtue ; '  the  body  would 
have  the  power  over  things  to  its  own  ends. 

The  soul  strives  amain  to  live  and  work  through 
all  things.  It  would  be  the  only  fact.  All  things 
shall  be  added  unto  it,  —  power,  pleasure,  knowl 
edge,  beauty.  The  particular  man  aims  to  be 
somebody ;  to  set  up  for  himself ;  to  truck  and  hig 
gle  for  a  private  good ;  and,  in  particulars,  to  ride 
that  he  may  ride  ;  to  dress  that  he  may  be  dressed ; 
to  eat  that  he  may  eat ;  and  to  govern,  that  he  may 
be  seen.  Men  seek  to  be  great ;  they  would  have 
offices,  wealth,  power  and  fame.  They  think  that 
to  be  great  is  to  possess  one  side  of  nature,  —  the 
sweet,  without  the  other  side,  the  bitter. 

This  dividing  and  detaching  is  steadily  counter 
acted.  Up  to  this  day  it  must  be  owned  no  pro 
jector  has  had  the  smallest  success.  The  parted 
water  reunites  behind  our  hand.  Pleasure  is 
taken  out  of  pleasant  things,  profit  out  of  profitable 
things,  power  out  of  strong  things,  as  soon  as  wa 


102  COMPENSATION. 

Beek  to  separate  them  from  the  whole.  We  can 
no  more  halve  things  and  get  the  sensual  good,  by 
itself,  than  we  can  get  an  inside  that  shall  have  no 
outside,  or  a  light  without  a  shadow.  "  Drive  out 
Nature  with  a  fork,  she  conies  running  back." 

Life  invests  itself  with  inevitable  conditions, 
which  the  unwise  seek  to  dodge,  which  one  and  an 
other  brags  that  he  does  not  know,  that  they  do  not 
touch  him  ;  —  but  the  brag  is  on  his  lips,  the  con 
ditions  are  in  his  soul.  If  he  escapes  them  in  one 
part  they  attack  him  in  another  more  vital  part. 
If  he  has  escaped  them  in  form  and  in  the  appear 
ance,  it  is  because  he  has  resisted  his  life  and  fled 
from  himself,  and  the  retribution  is  so  much  death. 
So  signal  is  the  failure  of  all  attempts  to  make  this 
separation  of  the  good  from  the  tax,  that  the  exper 
iment  would  not  be  tried,  —  since  to  try  it  is  to  be 
mad, — but  for  the  circumstance  that  when  the  dis 
ease  began  in  the  will,  of  rebellion  and  separation, 
the  intellect  is  at  once  infected,  so  that  the  man 
ceases  to  see  God  whole  in  each  object,  but  is  able  to 
see  the  sensual  allurement  of  an  object  and  not  see 
the  sensual  hurt ,  he  sees  the  mermaid's  head  but 
not  the  dragon's  tail,  and  thinks  he  can  cut  off 
that  which  he  would  have  from  that  which  he  would 
not  have.  "  How  secret  art  thou  who  dwellest  in 
the  highest  heavens  in  silence,  O  thou  only  great 
God,  sprinkling  with  an  unwearied  providence  cer« 


COMFENSA  TION.  103 

tain  penal  blindnesses  upon  such  as  have  unbridled 
desires !  "  l 

The  human  soul  is  true  to  these  facts  in  the 
painting  of  fable,  of  history,  of  law,  of  proverbs,  of 
conversation.  It  finds  a  tongue  in  literature  un 
awares.  Thus  the  Greeks  called  Jupiter,  Supreme 
Mind  ;  but  having  traditionally  ascribed  to  him 
many  base  actions,  they  involuntarily  made  amends 
to  reason  by  tying  up  the  hands  of  so  bad  a  god. 
He  is  made  as  helpless  as  a  king  of  England. 
Prometheus  knows  one  secret  which  Jove  must  bar 
gain  for;  Minerva,  another.  He  cannot  get  his 
own  thunders  ;  Minerva  keeps  the  key  of  them  :  — 

"  Of  all  the  gods,  I  only  know  the  keys 
That  ope  the  solid  doors  within  whose  vaults 
His  thunders  sleep." 

A  plain  confession  of  the  in-working  of  the  All  and 
of  its  moral  aim.  The  Indian  mythology  ends  in 
the  same  ethics ;  and  it  would  seem  impossible  for 
any  fable  to  be  invented  and  get  any  currency 
which  was  not  moral.  Aurora  forgot  to  ask  youth 
for  her  lover,  and  though  Tithonus  is  immortal,  he 
is  old.  Achilles  is  not  quite  invulnerable  ;  the  sa 
cred  waters  did  not  wash  the  heel  by  which  Thetis 
held  him.  Siegfried,  in  the  Nibelungen,  is  not  quite 
immortal,  for  a  leaf  fell  on  his  back  whilst  he  was 
bathing  in  the  dragon's  blood,  and  that  spot  which 
1  St.  Augustine,  Confessions,  B.  L 


1 04  COMPENSA  TION. 

it  covered  is  mortal.  And  so  it  must  be.  Thera 
is  a  crack  in  every  thing  God  has  made.  It  would 
seem  there  is  always  this  vindictive  circumstance 
stealing  in  at  unawares  even  into  the  wild  poesy  in 
which  the  human  fancy  attempted  to  make  bold 
holiday  and  to  shake  itself  free  of  the  old  laws,  — 
this  back-stroke,  this  kick  of  the  gun,  certifying 
that  the  law  is  fatal ;  that  in  nature  nothing  can 
be  given,  all  things  are  sold. 

This  is  that  ancient  doctrine  of  Nemesis,  who 
keeps  watch  in  the  universe  and  lets  no  offence  go 
unchastised.  The  Furies  they  said  are  attendants 
on  justice,  and  if  the  sun  in  heaven  should  trans 
gress  his  path  they  would  punish  him.  The  poets 
related  that  stone  walls  and  iron  swords  and  leath 
ern  thongs  had  an  occult  sympathy  with  the  wrongs 
of  their  owners  ;  that  the  belt  which  Ajax  gave 
Hector  dragged  the  Trojan  hero  over  the  field  at 
the  wheels  of  the  car  of  Achilles,  and  the  sword 
which  Hector  gave  Ajax  was  that  on  whose  point 
Ajax  fell.  They  recorded  that  when  the  Thasians 
erected  a  statue  to  Theagenes,  a  victor  in  the 
games,  one  of  his  rivals  went  to  it  by  night  and  en 
deavored  to  throw  it  down  by  repeated  blows,  until 
ut  last  he  moved  it  from  its  pedestal  and  was 
Crushed  to  death  beneath  its  fall. 

This  voice  of  fable  has  in  it  somewhat  divine.  It 
eame  from  thought  above  the  will  of  the  writer. 


COMPENSATION.  105 

That  is  the  best  part  of  each  writer  which  has  noth 
ing  private  in  it ;  that  which  he  does  not  know  ; 
that  which  flowed  out  of  his  constitution  and  not 
from  his  too  active  invention  ;  that  which  in  the 
study  of  a  single  artist  you  might  not  easily  find, 
but  in  the  study  of  many  you  would  abstract  as  the 
spirit  of  them  all.  Phidias  it  is  not,  but  the  work 
of  man  in  that  early  Hellenic  world  that  I  would 
know.  The  name  and  circumstance  of  Phidias, 
however  convenient  for  history,  embarrass  when  we 
come  to  the  highest  criticism.  We  are  to  see  that 
which  man  was  tending  to  do  in  a  given  period,  and 
was  hindered,  or,  if  you  will,  modified  in  doing,  by 
the  interfering  volitions  of  Phidias,  of  Dante,  of 
Shakspeare,  the  organ  whereby  man  at  the  moment 
wrought. 

Still  more  striking  is  the  expression  of  this  fact 
in  the  proverbs  of  all  nations,  which  are  always  the 
literature  of  reason,  or  the  statements  of  an  abso 
lute  truth  without  qualification.  Proverbs,  like 
the  sacred  books  of  each  nation,  are  the  sanctuary 
of  the  intuitions.  That  which  the  droning  world, 
chained  to  appearances,  will  not  allow  the  realist 
to  say  in  his  own  words,  it  will  suffer  him  to  say  in 
proverbs  without  contradiction.  And  this  law  of 
laws,  which  the  pulpit,  the  senate  and  the  college 
deny,  is  hourly  preached  in  all  markets  and  work 
shops  by  flights  of  proverbs,  whose  teaching  is  aa 
true  and  as  omnipresent  as  that  of  birds  and  flies. 


106  COMPENSATION. 

All  things  are  double,  one  against  another.  — 
Tit  for  tat ;  an  eye  for  an  eye ;  a  tooth  for  a  tooth  ; 
blood  for  blood  ;  measure  for  measure  ;  love  for 
love.  —  Give,  and  it  shall  be  given  you.  —  lie  that 
watereth  shall  be  watered  himself.  —  What  will 
you  have  ?  quoth  God  ;  pay  for  it  and  take  it.  — • 
Nothing  venture,  nothing  have.  —  Thou  shalt  be 
paid  exactly  for  what  thou  hast  done,  no  more,  no 
less.  —  Who  doth  not  work  shall  not  eat.  —  Harm 
watch,  harm  catch.  —  Curses  always  recoil  on  the 
head  of  him  who  imprecates  them.  —  If  you  put  a 
chain  around  the  neck  of  a  slave,  the  other  end  fas 
tens  itself  around  your  own.  —  Bad  counsel  con 
founds  the  adviser.  —  The  Devil  is  an  ass. 

It  is  thus  written,  because  it  is  thus  in  life.  Our 
action  is  overmastered  and  characterized  above  our 
will  by  the  law  of  nature.  We  aim  at  a  petty  end 
quite  aside  from  the  public  good,  but  our  act  ar 
ranges  itself  by  irresistible  magnetism  in  a  line 
with  the  poles  of  the  world. 

A  man  cannot  speak  but  he  judges  himself. 
With  his  will  or  against  his  will  he  draws  his  por 
trait  to  the  eye  of  his  companions  by  every  word. 
Every  opinion  reacts  on  him  who  utters  it.  It  is  a 
thread-ball  thrown  at  a  mark,  but  the  other  end 
remains  in  the  thrower's  bag.  Or  rather  it  is  a 
harpoon  hurled  at  the  whale,  unwinding,  as  it  flies, 
a  coil  of  cord  in  the  boat,  and,  if  the  harpoon  is 


COMPENSATION.  107 

not  good,  or  not  well  thrown,  it  will  go  nigh  to  cut 
the  steersman  in  twain  or  to  sink  the  boat. 

You  cannot  do  wrong  without  suffering  wrong. 
"  No  man  had  ever  a  point  of  pride  that  was  not 
injurious  to  him,"  said  Burke.  The  exclusive  ii* 
fashionable  life  does  not  see  that  he  excludes  him-, 
self  from  enjoyment,  in  the  attempt  to  appropriate 
it.  The  exclusionist  in  religion  does  not  see  that 
he  shuts  the  door  of  heaven  on  himself,  in  striving 
to  shut  out  others.  Treat  men  as  pawns  and  nine 
pins  and  you  shall  suffer  as  well  as  they.  If  you 
leave  out  their  heart,  you  shall  lose  your  own.  The 
senses  would  make  things  of  all  persons ;  of  women, 
of  children,  of  the  poor.  The  vulgar  proverb,  "  I 
will  get  it  from  his  purse  or  get  it  from  his  skin," 
is  sound  philosophy. 

All  infractions  of  love  and  equity  in  our  social 
relations  are  speedily  punished.  They  are  pun 
ished  by  fear.  Whilst  I  stand  in  simple  relations 
to  my  fellow-man,  I  have  no  displeasure  in  meet 
ing  him.  We  meet  as  water  meets  water,  or  as 
two  currents  of  air  mix,  with  perfect  diffusion  and 
inter  penetration  of  nature.  But  as  soon  as  there 
is  any  departure  from  simplicity  and  attempt  at 
halfness,  or  good  for  me  that  is  not  good  for  him, 
my  neighbor  feels  the  wrong  ;  he  shrinks  from  me 
as  far  as  I  have  shrunk  from  him ;  his  eyes  no 
longer  seek  mine ;  there  is  war  between  us ;  there 
is  hate  in  him  and  fear  in  me. 


108  COMPENSATION. 

All  the  old  abuses  in  society,  universal  and  par« 
ticular,  all  unjust  accumulations  of  property  and 
power,  are  avenged  in  the  same  manner.  Fear  is 
an  instructor  of  great  sagacity  and  the  herald  of  all 
revolutions.  One  thing  he  teaches,  that  there  is 
rottenness  where  he  appears.  He  is  a  carrion  crow, 
and  though  you  see  not  well  what  he  hovers  for, 
there  is  death  somewhere.  Our  property  is  timid, 
our  laws  are  timid,  our  cultivated  classes  are  timid. 
Fear  for  ages  has  boded  and  mowed  and  gibbered 
over  government  and  property.  That  obscene  bird 
is  not  there  for  nothing.  He  indicates  great 
wrongs  which  must  be  revised. 

Of  the  like  nature  is  that  expectation  of  change 
which  instantly  follows  the  suspension  of  our  volun 
tary  activity.  The  terror  of  cloudless  noon,  the 
emerald  of  Polycrates,  the  awe  of  prosperity,  the 
instinct  which  leads  every  generous  soul  to  impose 
on  itself  tasks  of  a  noble  asceticism  and  vicarious 
virtue,  are  the  tremblings  of  the  balance  of  justice 
through  the  heart  and  mind  of  man. 

Experienced  men  of  the  world  know  very  well 
that  it  is  best  to  pay  scot  and  lot  as  they  go  along, 
and  that  a  man  often  pays  dear  for  a  small  frugal 
ity.  The  borrower  runs  in  his  own  debt.  Has  a 
man  gained  any  thing  who  has  received  a  hundred 
favors  and  rendered  none  ?  Has  he  gained  by  bor 
rowing,  through  indolence  or  cunning,  his  neigh. 


COMPENSATION.  109 

bor's  wares,  or  horses,  or  money  ?  There  arises  on 
the  deed  the  instant  acknowledgment  of  benefit  on 
the  one  part  and  of  debt  on  the  other  ;  that  is,  of  su 
periority  and  inferiority.  The  transaction  remains 
in  the  memory  of  himself  and  his  neighbor ;  and 
every  new  transaction  alters  according  to  its  nature 
their  relation  to  each  other.  He  may  soon  come 
to  see  that  he  had  better  have  broken  his  own  bones 
than  to  have  ridden  in  his  neighbor's  coach,  and 
that  "the  highest  price  he  can  pay  for  a  thing  is  to 
ask  for  it." 

A  wise  man  will  extend  this  lesson  to  all  parts  of 
life,  and  know  that  it .  is  the  part  of  prudence  to 
face  every  claimant  and  pay  every  just  demand  on 
your  time,  your  talents,  or  your  heart.  Always 
pay ;  for  first  or  last  you  must  pay  your  entire  debt. 
Persons  and  events  may  stand  for  a  time  between 
you  and  justice,  but  it  is  only  a  postponement.  You 
must  pay  at  last  your  own  debt.  If  you  are  wise 
you  will  dread  a  prosperity  which  only  loads  you 
with  more.  Benefit  is  the  end  of  nature.  But  for 
every  benefit  which  you  receive,  a  tax  is  levied. 
He  is  great  who  confers  the  most  benefits.  He  is 
base,  —  and  that  is  the  one  base  thing  in  the  uni 
verse,  —  to  receive  favors  and  render  none.  In  the 
order  of  nature  we  cannot  render  benefits  to  those 
from  whom  we  receive  them,  or  only  seldom.  But 
the  benefit  we  receive  must  be  rendered  again,  line 


110  COMPENSA  TION. 

for  line,  deed  for  deed,  cent  for  cent,  to  somebody. 
Beware  of  too  much  good  staying  in  your  hand.  It 
will  fast  corrupt  and  worm  worms.  Pay  it  away 
quickly  in  some  sort. 

Labor  is  watched  over  by  the  same  pitiless  laws. 
Cheapest,  say  the  prudent,  is  the  dearest  labor. 
What  we  buy  in  a  broom,  a  mat,  a  wagon,  a  knife, 
is  some  application  of  good  sense  to  a  common 
want.  It  is  best  to  pay  in  your  land  a  skilful  gar 
dener,  or  to  buy  good  sense  applied  to  gardening ; 
in  your  sailor,  good  sense  applied  to  navigation  ;  in 
the  house,  good  sense  applied  to  cooking,  sewing, 
serving ;  in  your  agent,  good  sense  applied  to  ac 
counts  and  affairs.  So  do  you  multiply  your  pres 
ence,  or  spread  yourself  throughout  your  estate. 
But  because  of  the  dual  constitution  of  things,  in 
labor  as  in  life  there  can  be  no  cheating.  The  thief 
steals  from  himself.  The  swindler  swindles  him 
self.  For  the  real  price  of  labor  is  knowledge  and 
virtue,  whereof  wealth  and  credit  are  signs.  These 
signs,  like  paper  money,  may  be  counterfeited  or 
stolen,  but  that  which  they  represent,  namely,  knowl 
edge  and  virtue,  cannot  be  counterfeited  or  stolen. 
These  ends  of  labor  cannot  be  answered  but  by  real 
exertions  of  the  mind,  and  in  obedience  to  pure  mo 
tives.  The  cheat,  the  defaulter,  the  gambler,  can- 
tiot  extort  the  knowledge  of  material  and  moral  na 
ture  which  his  honest  care  and  pains  yield  to  the 


COMPENSATION.  Ill 

operative.  The  law  of  nature  is,  Do  the  thing,  and 
you  shall  have  the  power ;  but  they  who  do  not  the 
thing  have  not  the  power. 

Human  labor,  through  all  its  forms,  from  the 
sharpening  of  a  stake  to  the  construction  of  a  city 
or  an  epic,  is  one  immense  illustration  of  the  per 
fect  compensation  of  the  universe.  The  absolute 
balance  of  Give  and  Take,  the  doctrine  that  every 
thing  has  its  price,  —  and  if  that  price  is  not  paid, 
not  that  thing  but  something  else  is  obtained,  and 
that  it  is  impossible  to  get  any  thing  without  its 
price,  —  is  not  less  sublime  in  the  columns  of  a 
leger  than  in  the  budgets  of  states,  in  the  laws  of 
light  and  darkness,  in  all  the  action  and  reaction  of 
nature.  1  cannot  doubt  that  the  high  laws  which 
each  man  sees  implicated  in  those  processes  with 
which  he  is  conversant,  the  stern  ethics  which 
sparkle  on  his  chisel-edge,  which  are  measured  out 
by  his  plumb  and  foot-rule,  which  stand  as  mani 
fest  in  the  footing  of  the  shop-bill  as  in  the  history 
of  a  state,  —  do  recommend  to  him  his  trade,  and 
though  seldom  named,  exalt  his  business  to  his  im 
agination. 

The  league  between  virtue  and  nature  engages 
all  things  to  assume  a  hostile  front  to  vice.  The 
beautiful  laws  and  substances  of  the  world  perse 
cute  and  whip  the  traitor.  He  finds  that  things 
are  arranged  for  truth  and  benefit,  but  there  is  no 


112  COMPENSA  TION. 

den  in  the  wide  world  to  hide  a  rogue.  Commit  a 
crime,  and  the  earth  is  made  of  glass.  Commit  a 
crime,  and  it  seems  as  if  a  coat  of  snow  fell  on  the 
ground,  such  as  reveals  in  the  woods  the  track  of 
every  partridge  and  fox  and  squirrel  and  mole0 
You  cannot  recall  the  spoken  word,  you  cannot 
wipe  out  the  foot -track,  you  cannot  draw  up  the 
ladder,  so  as  to  leave  no  inlet  or  clew.  Some  damn 
ing  circumstance  always  transpires.  The  laws  and 
substances  of  nature,  —  water,  snow,  wind,  gravita 
tion,  —  become  penalties  to  the  thief. 

On  the  other  hand  the  law  holds  with  equal  sure- 
ness  for  all  right  action.  Love,  and  you  shall  be 
loved.  All  love  is  mathematically  just,  as  much  as 
the  two  sides  of  an  algebraic  equation.  The  good 
man  has  absolute  good,  which  like  fire  turns  every 
thing  to  its  own  nature,  so  that  you  cannot  do  him 
any  harm  ;  but  as  the  royal  armies  sent  against  Na 
poleon,  when  he  approached  cast  down  their  colors 
and  from  enemies  became  friends,  so  disasters  of 
all  kinds,  as  sickness,  offence,  poverty,  prove  bene 
factors  :  — 

"  Winds  blow  and  waters  roll 

Strength  to  the  brave  and  power  and  deity, 

Yet  in  themselves  are  nothing." 

The  good  are  befriended  even  by  weakness  and 
defect.  As  no  man  had  ever  a  point  of  pride  that 
was  not  injurious  to  him,  so  no  man  had  ever  a  de- 


COMPENSATION.  113 

feet  that  was  not  somewhere  made  useful  to  him. 
The  stag  in  the  fable  admired  his  horns  and  blamed 
his  feet,  but  when  the  hunter  came,  his  feet  saved 
him,  and  afterwards,  caught  in  the  thicket,  his 
horns  destroyed  him.  Every  man  in  his  lifetime 
needs  to  thank  his  faults.  As  no  man  thoroughly 
understands  a  truth  until  he  has  contended  against 
it,  so  no  man  has  a  thorough  acquaintance  with  the 
hindrances  or  talents  of  men  until  he  has  suffered 
from  the  one  and  seen  the  triumph  of  the  other 
over  his  own  want  of  the  same.  Has  he  a  defect  of 
temper  that  unfits  him  to  live  in  society  ?  Thereby 
he  is  driven  to  entertain  himself  alone  and  acquire 
habits  of  self-help  ;  and  thus,  like  the  wounded  oys 
ter,  he  mends  his  shell  with  pearl. 

Our  strength  grows  out  of  our  weakness.  The 
indignation  which  arms  itself  with  secret  forces 
does  not  awaken  until  we  are  pricked  and  stung  and 
sorely  assailed.  A  great  man  is  always  willing  to 
be  little.  Whilst  he  sits  on  the  cushion  of  advan 
tages,  he  goes  to  sleep.  When  he  is  pushed,  tor 
mented,  defeated,  he  has  a  chance  to  learn  some 
thing  ;  he  has  been  put  on  his  wits,  on  his  manhood  ; 
he  has  gained  facts  ;  learns  his  ignorance  ;  is  cured 
of  the  insanity  of  conceit ;  has  got  moderation  and 
real  skill.  The  wise  man  throws  himself  on  the 
side  of  his  assailants.  It  is  more  his  interest  than 
it  is  theirs  to  find  his  weak  point.  The  wound  cica- 

VOL.   II.  8 


114  COM  PENS  A  TION. 

trizes  and  falls  off  from  him  like  a  dead  skin  and 
when  they  would  triumph,  lo  !  he  has  passed  on  in 
vulnerable.  Blame  is  safer  than  praise.  I  hate  to 
be  defended  in  a  newspaper.  As  long  as  all  that 
is  said  is  said  against  me,  I  feel  a  certain  assur 
ance  of  success.  But  as  soon  as  honeyed  words  of 
praise  are  spoken  for  me  I  feel  as  one  that  lies 
unprotected  before  his  enemies.  In  general,  every 
evil  to  which  we  do  not  succumb  is  a  benefac 
tor.  As  the  Sandwich  Islander  believes  that  the 
strength  and  valor  of  the  enemy  he  kills  passes 
into  himself,  so  we  gain  the  strength  of  the  temp 
tation  we  resist. 

The  same  guards  which  protect  us  from  disaster, 
defect  and  enmity,  defend  us,  if  we  will,  from  self 
ishness  and  fraud.  Bolts  and  bars  are  not  the 
best  of  our  institutions,  nor  is  shrewdness  in  trade 
a  mark  of  wisdom.  Men  suffer  all  their  life  long 
under  the  foolish  superstition  that  they  can  be 
cheated.  But  it  is  as  impossible  for  a  man  to  be 
cheated  by  any  one  but  himself,  as  for  a  thing  to  be 
and  not  to  be  at  the  same  time.  There  is  a  third 
silent  party  to  all  our  bargains.  The  nature  and 
soul  of  things  takes  on  itself  the  guaranty  of  the 
fulfilment  of  every  contract,  so  that  honest  service 
cannot  come  to  loss.  If  you  serve  an  ungrateful 
master,  serve  him  the  more.  Put  God  in  your  debt 
Every  stroke  shall  be  repaid.  The  longer  the  pay* 


COMPENSATION.  115 

mcnt  is  witliholden,  the  better  for  you ;  for  com 
pound  interest  on  compound  interest  is  the  rate  and 
usage  of  this  exchequer. 

The  history  of  persecution  is  a  history  of  en 
deavors  to  cheat  nature,  to  make  water  run  up  hil!5 
to  twist  a  rope  of  sand.  It  makes  no  difference 
whether  the  actors  be  many  or  one,  a  tyrant  or  a 
mob.  A  mob  is  a  society  of  bodies  voluntarily  be 
reaving  themselves  of  reason  and  traversing  its 
work.  The  mob  is  man  voluntarily  descending 
to  the  nature  of  the  beast.  Its  fit  hour  of  activity 
is  night.  Its  actions  are  insane,  like  its  whole  con 
stitution.  It  persecutes  a  principle  ;  it  would  whip 
a  right ;  it  would  tar  and  feather  justice,  by  inflict 
ing  fire  and  outrage  upon  the  houses  and  persons  of 
those  who  have  these.  It  resembles  the  prank  of 
boys,  who  run  with  fire-engines  to  put  out  the  ruddy 
aurora  streaming  to  the  stars.  The  inviolate  spirit 
turns  their  spite  against  the  wrongdoers.  The  mar 
tyr  cannot  be  dishonored.  Every  lash  inflicted  is  a 
tongue  of  fame;  every  prison  a  more  illustrious 
abode ;  every  burned  book  or  house  enlightens  the 
world ;  every  suppressed  or  expunged  word  rever 
berates  through  the  earth  from  side  to  side.  Hours 
of  sanity  and  consideration  are  always  arriving  to 
communities,  as  to  individuals,  when  the  truth  is 
seen  and  the  martyrs  are  justified. 


116  COMPENSATION. 

Thus  do  all  things  preach  the  indiiferency  of  eir< 
cum  stances.  The  man  is  all.  Every  thing  has  two 
sides,  a  good  and  an  evil.  Every  advantage  has 
its  tax.  I  learn  to  be  content.  But  the  doctrine 
of  compensation  is  not  the  doctrine  of  indifferency. 
The  thoughtless  say,  on  hearing  these  representa 
tions, —  What  boots  it  to  do  well?  there  is  one 
event  to  good  and  evil ;  if  I  gain  any  good  I  must 
pay  for  it ;  if  I  lose  any  good  I  gain  some  other ; 
all  actions  are  indifferent. 

There  is  a  deeper  fact  in  the  soul  than  compensa 
tion,  to  wit,  its  own  nature.  The  soul  is  not  a  com 
pensation,  but  a  life.  The  soul  is.  Under  all  this 
running  sea  of  circumstance,  whose  waters  ebb  and 
flow  with  perfect  balance,  lies  the  aboriginal  abyss 
of  real  Being.  Essence,  or  God,  is  not  a  relation 
or  a  part,  but  the  whole.  Being  is  the  vast  affirma 
tive,  excluding  negation,  self-balanced,  and  swal 
lowing  up  all  relations,  parts  and  times  within 
itself.  Nature,  truth,  virtue,  are  the  influx  from 
thence.  Vice  is  the  absence  or  departure  of  the 
same.  Nothing,  Falsehood,  may  indeed  stand  as 
the  great  Night  or  shade  on  which  as  a  background 
the  living  universe  paints  itself  forth,  but  no  fact 
is  begotten  by  it ;  it  cannot  work,  for  it  is  not. 
It  cannot  work  any  good ;  it  cannot  work  any 
harm.  It  is  harm  inasmuch  as  it  is  worse  not  to 
be  than  to  be. 


COMPENSATION.  117 

V^e  feel  defrauded  of  the  retribution  due  to  evil 
acts,  because  the  criminal  adheres  to  his  vice  and 
contumacy  and  does  not  come  to  a  crisis  or  judg 
ment  anywhere  in  visible  nature.  There  is  no 
stunning  confutation  of  his  nonsense  before  men 
and  angels.  Has  he  therefore  outwitted  the  law  ? 
Inasmuch  as  he  carries  the  malignity  and  the  lie 
with  him  he  so  far  deceases  from  nature.  In  some 
manner  there  will  be  a  demonstration  of  the  wrong 
to  the  understanding  also ;  but,  should  we  not  see 
it,  this  deadly  deduction  makes  square  the  eternal 
account. 

Neither  can  it  be  said,  on  the  other  hand,  that 
the  gain  of  rectitude  must  be  bought  by  any  loss. 
There  is  no  penalty  to  virtue  ;  no  penalty  to  wis 
dom  ;  they  are  proper  additions  of  being.  In  a  vir 
tuous  action  I  properly  am  ;  in  a  virtuous  act  I  add 
to  the  world  ;  I  plant  into  deserts  conquered  from 
Chaos  and  Nothing  and  see  the  darkness  receding 
on  the  limits  of  the  horizon.  There  can  be  no  ex 
cess  to  love,  none  to  knowledge,  none  to  beauty, 
when  these  attributes  are  considered  in  the  purest 
sense.  The  soul  refuses  limits,  and  always  affirms 
an  Optimism,  never  a  Pessimism. 

His  life  is  a  progress,  and  not  a  station.  His 
instinct  is  trust.  Our  instinct  uses  "  more  "  and 
14  less  "  in  application  to  man,  of  the  presence  of 
the  soul,  and  not  of  its  absence ,  the  brave  man  is 


118  COMPENSATION. 

greater  than  the  coward  ;  the  true,  the  benevolent, 
the  wise,  is  more  a  man  and  not  less,  than  the  fool 
and  knave.  There  is  no  tax  on  the  good  of  virtue, 
for  that  is  the  incoming  of  God  himself,  or  abso 
lute  existence,  without  any  comparative.  Material 
good  has  its  tax,  and  if  it  came  without  desert  or 
sweat,  has  no  root  in  me,  and  the  next  wind  will 
blow  it  away.  But  all  the  good  of  nature  is  the 
soul's,  and  may  be  had  if  paid  for  in  nature's  law 
ful  coin,  that  is,  by  labor  which  the  heart  and  the 
head  allow.  I  no  longer  wish  to  meet  a  good  I  do 
not  earn,  for  example  to  find  a  pot  of  buried  gold, 
knowing  that  it  brings  with  it  new  burdens.  I  do 
not  wish  more  external  goods,  —  neither  posses 
sions,  nor  honors,  nor  powers,  nor  persons,  The 
gain  is  apparent ;  the  tax  is  certain.  But  there  is 
no  tax  on  the  knowledge  that  the  compensation  ex 
ists  and  that  it  is  not  desirable  to  dig  up  treasure. 
Herein  I  rejoice  with  a  serene  eternal  peace.  I 
contract  the  boundaries  of  possible  mischief.  I 
learn  the  wisdom  of  St.  Bernard,  —  "  Nothing  can 
work  me  damage  except  myself  ;  the  harm  that  I 
sustain  I  carry  about  with  me,  and  never  am  a  real 
sufferer  but  by  my  own  fault." 

In  the  nature  of  the  soul  is  the  compensation  for 
the  inequalities  of  condition.  The  radical  tragedy 
of  nature  seems  to  be  the  distinction  of  More  and 
Less.  How  can  Less  not  feel  the  pain ;  how  not 


COMPENSA  TION.  119 

feel  indignation  or  malevolence  towards  More  ? 
Look  at  those  who  have  less  faculty,  and  one  feels 
sad  and  knows  not  well  what  to  make  of  it.  He 
almost  shuns  their  eye ;  he  fears  they  will  upbraid 
God.  What  should  they  do  ?  It  seems  a  great  in 
justice.  But  see  the  facts  nearly  and  these  moun 
tainous  inequalities  vanish.  Love  reduces  them  ag 
the  sun  melts  the  iceberg  in  the  sea.  The  heart 
and  soul  of  all  men  being  one,  this  bitterness  of 
His  and  Mine  ceases.  His  is  mine.  I  am  my 
brother  and  my  brother  is  me.  If  I  feel  overshad 
owed  and  outdone  by  great  neighbors,  I  can  yet 
love  ;  I  can  still  receive ;  and  he  that  loveth  maketh 
his  own  the  grandeur  he  loves.  Thereby  I  make 
the  discovery  that  my  brother  is  my  guardian,  act 
ing  for  me  with  the  friendliest  designs,  and  the 
estate  I  so  admired  and  envied  is  my  own.  It  is 
the  nature  of  the  soul  to  appropriate  all  things. 
Jesus  and  Shakspeare  are  fragments  of  the  soul, 
and  by  love  I  conquer  and  incorporate  them  in  my 
own  conscious  domain.  His  virtue,  —  is  not  that 
mine  ?  His  wit,  —  if  it  cannot  be  made  mine,  it  is 
not  wit. 

Such  also  is  the  natural  history  of  calamity. 
The  changes  which  break  up  at  short  intervals  the 
prosperity  of  men  are  advertisements  of  a  nature 
whose  law  is  growth.  Every  soul  is  by  this  intrin 
sic  necessity  quitting  its  whole  system  of  things,  its 


120  COMPENSATION. 

friends  and  home  and  laws  and  faith,  as  the  shell* 
fish  crawls  out  of  its  beautiful  but  stony  case,  be 
cause  it  no  longer  admits  of  its  growth,  and  slowly 
forms  a  new  house.  In  proportion  to  the  vigor  of 
the  individual  these  revolutions  are  frequent,  until 
in  some  happier  mind  they  are  incessant  and  all 
worldly  relations  hang  very  loosely  about  him,  be 
coming  as  it  were  a  transparent  fluid  membrane 
through  which  the  living  form  is  seen,  and  not,  as 
in  most  men,  an  indurated  heterogeneous  fabric  of 
many  dates  and  of  no  settled  character,  in  which 
the  man  is  imprisoned.  Then  there  can  be  enlarge 
ment,  and  the  man  of  to-day  scarcely  recognizes 
the  man  of  yesterday.  And  such  should  be  the 
outward  biography  of  man  in  time,  a  putting  off  of 
dead  circumstances  day  by  day,  as  he  renews  his 
raiment  day  by  day.  But  to  us,  in  our  lapsed  es 
tate,  resting,  not  advancing,  resisting,  not  cooperat 
ing  with  the  divine  expansion,  this  growth  comes 
by  shocks. 

We  cannot  part  with  our  friends.  We  cannot 
let  our  angels  go.  We  do  not  see  that  they  only 
go  out  that  archangels  may  come  in.  We  are  idol 
aters  of  the  old.  We  do  not  believe  in  the  riches 
of  the  soul,  in  its  proper  eternity  arid  omnipresence, 
We  do  not  believe  there  is  any  force  in  to-day  to 
rival  or  recreate  that  beautiful  yesterday.  We  lin 
ger  in  the  ruins  of  the  old  tent  where  once  we  had 


COMPENSATION.  121 

bread  and  shelter  and  organs,  nor  believe  that  the 
spirit  can  feed,  cover,  and  nerve  us  again.  We 
cannot  again  find  aught  so  dear,  so  sweet,  so  grace 
ful.  But  we  sit  and  weep  in  vain.  The  voice  of 
the  Almighty  saith,  '  Up  and  onward  for  ever- 
more  !  '  We  cannot  stay  amid  the  ruins.  Neither 
will  we  rely  on  the  new ;  and  so  we  walk  ever  with 
reverted  eyes,  like  those  monsters  who  look  back- 
wards. 

And  yet  the  compensations  of  calamity  are  made 
apparent  to  the  understanding  also,  after  long  inter 
vals  of  time.  A  fever,  a  mutilation,  a  cruel  disap 
pointment,  a  loss  of  wealth,  a  loss  of  friends,  seems 
at  the  moment  unpaid  loss,  and  unpayable.  But 
the  sure  years  reveal  the  deep  remedial  force  that 
underlies  all  facts.  The  death  of  a  dear  friend, 
wife,  brother,  lover,  which  seemed  nothing  but  pri 
vation,  somewhat  later  assumes  the  aspect  of  a 
guide  or  genius ;  for  it  commonly  operates  revolu 
tions  in  our  way  of  life,  terminates  an  epoch  of  in 
fancy  or  of  youth  which  was  waiting  to  be  closed, 
breaks  up  a  wonted  occupation,  or  a  household,  or 
style  of  living,  and  allows  the  formation  of  new 
ones  more  friendly  to  the  growth  of  character.  It 
permits  or  constrains  the  formation  of  new  ac 
quaintances  and  the  reception  of  new  influences 
that  prove  of  the  first  importance  to  the  next  years ; 
and  the  man  or  woman  who  would  have  remained 


122  COMPENSATION. 

a  sunny  garden-flower,  with  no  room  for  its  roots 
and  too  much  sunshine  for  its  head,  by  the  falling 
of  the  walls  and  the  neglect  of  the  gardener  is  made 
the  banian  of  the  forest,  yielding  shade  and  fruit  to 
wide  neighborhoods  of  men 


SPIRITUAL  LAWS. 


THE  living  Heaven  thy  prayers  respect 
House  at  once  and  architect, 
Quarrying  man's  rejected  hours, 
Builds  there  with  eternal  towers  ; 
Sole  and  self-commanded  works, 
Fears  not  undermining  days, 
Grows  by  decays, 

And,  by  the  famous  might  that  lurks 
In  reaction  and  recoil, 
Makes  flame  to  freeze  and  ice  to  boil ; 
Forging,  through  swart  arms  of  Offence, 
The  silver  seat  of  Innocence. 


IV. 

SPIRITUAL  LAWS. 


WHEN  the  act  of  reflection  takes  place  in  the 
mind,  when  we  look  at  ourselves  in  the  light  of 
thought,  we  discover  that  our  life  is  embosomed  in 
beauty.  Behind  us,  as  we  go,  all  things  assume 
pleasing  forms,  as  clouds  do  far  off.  Not  only 
things  familiar  and  stale,  but  even  the  tragic  and 
terrible  are  comely  as  they  take  their  place  in  the 
pictures  of  memory.  The  river-bank,  the  weed  at 
the  water-side,  the  old  house,  the  foolish  person, 
however  neglected  in  the  passing,  have  a  grace  in 
the  past.  Even  the  corpse  that  has  lain  in  the 
chambers  has  added  a  solemn  ornament  to  the 
house.  The  soul  will  not  know  either  deformity  or 
pain.  If  in  the  hours  of  clear  reason  we  should 
speak  the  severest  truth,  we  should  say  that  we  had 
never  made  a  sacrifice.  In  these  hours  the  mind 
seems  so  great  that  nothing  can  be  taken  from  us 
that  seems  much.  All  loss,  all  pain,  is  particular ; 
the  universe  remains  to  the  heart  unhurt.  Neither 


126  SPIRITUAL  LAWS. 

vexations  nor  calamities  abate  our  trust.  No  man 
ever  stated  his  griefs  as  lightly  as  he  might.  Allow 
for  exaggeration  in  the  most  patient  and  sorely  rid 
den  hack  that  ever  was  driven.  For  it  is  only  the 
finite  that  has  wrought  and  suffered ;  the  infinite 
lies  stretched  in  smiling  repose. 

The  intellectual  life  may  be  kept  clean  and 
healthful  if  man  will  live  the  life  of  nature  and  not 
import  into  his  mind  difficulties  which  are  none  of 
his.  No  man  need  be  perplexed  in  his  speculations. 
Let  him  do  and  say  what  strictly  belongs  to  him,  and 
though  very  ignorant  of  books,  his  nature  shall  not 
yield  him  any  intellectual  obstructions  and  doubts. 
Our  young  people  are  diseased  with  the  theological 
problems  of  original  sin,  origin  of  evil,  predestina 
tion  and  the  like.  These  never  presented  a  practi 
cal  difficulty  to  any  man,  —  never  darkened  across 
any  man's  road  who  did  not  go  out  of  his  way  to 
seek  them.  These  are  the  soul's  mumps  and  mea 
sles  and  whooping-coughs,  and  those  who  have  not 
caught  them  cannot  describe  their  health  or  pre 
scribe  the  cure.  A  simple  mind  will  not  know 
these  enemies.  It  is  quite  another  thing  that  he 
should  be  able  to  give  account  of  his  faith  and  ex 
pound  to  another  the  theory  of  his  self-union  and 
freedom.  This  requires  rare  gifts.  Yet  without 
this  self-knowledge  there  may  be  a  sylvan  strength 
and  integrity  in  that  which  he  is.  "  A  few  strong 
instincts  and  a  few  plam  rules  "  suffice  us. 


SPIRITUAL  LAWS.  127 

My  will  never  gave  the  images  in  my  mind  the 
rank  they  now  take.  The  regular  course  of  studies, 
the  years  of  academical  and  professional  education 
have  not  yielded  me  better  facts  than  some  idle 
books  under  the  bench  at  the  Latin  School.  What 
we  do  not  call  education  is  more  precious  than 
that  which  we  call  so.  We  form  no  guess,  at  the 
time  of  receiving  a  thought,  of  its  comparative  value. 
And  education  often  wastes  its  effort  in  attempts 
to  thwart  and  balk  this  natural  magnetism,  which 
is  sure  to  select  what  belongs  to  it. 

In  like  manner  our  moral  nature  is  vitiated  by 
any  interference  of  our  will.  People  represent  vir 
tue  as  a  struggle,  and  take  to  themselves  great  airs 
upon  their  attainments,  and  the  question  is  every 
where  vexed  when  a  noble  nature  is  commended, 
whether  the  man  is  not  better  who  strives  with 
temptation.  But  there  is  no  merit  in  the  matter. 
Either  God  is  there  or  he  is  not  there.  We  love 
characters  in  proportion  as  they  are  impulsive  and 
spontaneous.  The  less  a  man  thinks  or  knows 
about  his  virtues  the  better  we  like  him.  Timole- 
on's  victories  are  the  best  victories,  which  ran  and 
flowed  like  Homer's  verses,  Plutarch  said.  When 
we  see  a  soul  whose  acts  are  all  regal,  graceful  and 
pleasant  as  roses,  we  must  thank  God  that  such 
things  can  be  and  are,  and  not  turn  sourly  on  the 
angel  and  say  '  Crump  is  a  better  man  with  his 
grunting  resistance  to  all  his  native  devils.' 


128  SPIRITUAL  LAWS. 

Not  less  conspicuous  is  the  preponderance  of  na. 
ture  over  will  in  all  practical  life.  There  is  less  in 
tention  in  history  than  we  ascribe  to  it.  We  impute 
deep-laid  far-sighted  plans  to  Ca3sar  and  Napoleon ; 
but  the  best  of  their  power  was  in  nature,  not  in 
them.  Men  of  an  extraordinary  success,  in  their 
honest  moments,  have  always  sung  4  Not  unto  us, 
not  unto  us.'  According  to  the  faith  of  their  times 
they  have  built  altars  to  Fortune,  or  to  Destiny,  or 
to  St.  Julian.  Their  success  lay  in  their  parallelism 
to  the  course  of  thought,  which  found  in  them  an 
unobstructed  channel  ;  and  the  wonders  of  which 
they  were  the  visible  conductors  seemed  to  the  eye 
their  deed.  Did  the  wires  generate  the  galvanism  ? 
It  is  even  true  that  there  was  less  in  them  on  which 
they  could  reflect  than  in  another ;  as  the  virtue  of 
a  pipe  is  to  be  smooth  and  hollow.  That  which  ex 
ternally  seemed  will  and  immovableness  was  willing 
ness  and  self-annihilation.  Could  Shakspeare  give 
a  theory  of  Shakspeare  ?  Could  ever  a  man  of 
prodigious  mathematical  genius  convey  to  others  any 
insight  into  his  methods  ?  If  he  could  communi 
cate  that  secret  it  would  instantly  lose  its  exagger 
ated  value,  blending  with  the  daylight  and  the  vital 
energy  the  power  to  stand  and  to  go. 

The  lesson  is  forcibly  taught  by  these  observa 
tions  that  our  life  might  be  much  easier  and  simpler 
than  we  make  it ;  that  the  world  might  be  a  happier 


SPIRITUAL  LAWS.  120 

place  than  it  is  ;  that  there  is  no  need  of  struggles, 
convulsions,  and  despairs,  of  the  wringing  of  the 
hands  and  the  gnashing  of  the  teeth  ;  that  we  mis- 
create  our  own  evils.  We  interfere  with  the  opti 
mism  of  nature ;  for  whenever  we  get  this  vantage- 
ground  of  the  past,  or  of  a  wiser  mind  in  the  present, 
we  are  able  to  discern  that  we  are  begirt  with  laws 
which  execute  themselves. 

The  face  of  external  nature  teaches  the  same  les 
son.  Nature  will  not  have  us  fret  and  fume.  She 
does  not  like  our  benevolence  or  our  learning  much 
better  than  she  likes  our  frauds  and  wars.  When 
we  come  out  of  the  caucus,  or  the  bank,  or  the 
Abolition-convention,  or  the  Temperance-meeting, 
or  the  Transcendental  club  into  the  fields  and 
woods,  she  says  to  us,  '  So  hot  ?  my  little  Sir/ 

We  are  full  of  mechanical  actions.  We  must 
needs  intermeddle  and  have  things  in  our  own  way, 
until  the  sacrifices  and  virtues  of  society  are  odious. 
Love  should  make  joy  ;  but  our  benevolence  is  un 
happy.  Our  Sunday-schools  and  churches  and 
pauper-societies  are  yokes  to  the  neck.  We  pain 
ourselves  to  please  nobody.  There  are  natural 
ways  of  arriving  at  the  same  ends  at  which  these 
aim,  but  do  not  arrive.  Why  should  all  virtue 
work  in  one  and  the  same  way  ?  Why  should  all 
give  dollars  ?  It  is  very  inconvenient  to  us  country 
folk,  and  we  do  not  think  any  good  will  come  of  it, 

VOL.    II.  9 


130  SPIRITUAL  LAWS. 

We  have  not  dollars,  merchants  have ;  let  them 
give  them.  Farmers  will  give  corn ;  poets  will 
sing ;  women  will  sew ;  laborers  will  lend  a  hand ; 
the  children  will  bring  flowers.  And  why  drag 
this  dead  weight  of  a  Sunday-school  over  the  whole 
Christendom?  It  is  natural  and  beautiful  that 
childhood  should  inquire  and  maturity  should 
teach ;  but  it  is  time  enough  to  answer  questions 
when  they  are  asked.  Do  not  shut  up  the  young 
people  against  their  will  in  a  pew  and  force  the 
children  to  ask  them  questions  for  an  hour  against 
their  will. 

If  we  look  wider,  things  are  all  alike ;  laws  and 
letters  and  creeds  and  modes  of  living  seem  a  trav 
esty  of  truth.  Our  society  is  encumbered  by  pon 
derous  machinery,  which  resembles  the  endless 
aqueducts  which  the  Romans  built  over  hill  and 
dale  and  which  are  superseded  by  the  discovery  of 
the  law  that  water  rises  to  the  level  of  its  source. 
It  is  a  Chinese  wall  which  any  nimble  Tartar  can 
leap  over.  It  is  a  standing  army,  not  so  good  as  a 
peace.  It  is  a  graduated,  titled,  richly  appointed 
empire,  quite  superfluous  when  town-meetings  are 
found  to  answer  just  as  well. 

Let  us  draw  a  lesson  from  nature,  which  always 
works  by  short  ways.  When  the  fruit  is  ripe,  it 
falls.  When  the  fruit  is  despatched,  the  leaf  falls. 
The  circuit  of  the  waters  is  mere  falling.  The 


SPIRITUAL  LAWS.  131 

walking  of  man  and  all  animals  is  a  falling  for 
ward.  All  our  manual  labor  and  works  of 
strength,  as  prying,  splitting,  digging,  rowing  and 
so  forth,  are  done  by  dint  of  continual  falling,  and 
the  globe,  earth,  moon,  comet,  sun,  star,  fall  for 
ever  and  ever. 

The  simplicity  of  the  universe  is  very  different 
from  the  simplicity  of  a  machine.  He  who  sees 
moral  nature  out  and  out  and  thoroughly  knows 
how  knowledge  is  acquired  and  character  formed, 
is  a  pedant.  The  simplicity  of  nature  is  not  that 
which  may  easily  be  read,  but  is  inexhaustible. 
The  last  analysis  can  no  wise  be  made.  We  judge 
of  a  man's  wisdom  by  his  hope,  knowing  that  the 
perception  of  the  inexhaustibleness  of  nature  is  an 
immortal  youth.  The  wild  fertility  of  nature  is 
felt  in  comparing  our  rigid  names  and  reputations 
with  our  fluid  consciousness.  We  pass  in  the  world 
for  sects  and  schools,  for  erudition  and  piety,  and 
we  are  all  the  time  jejune  babes.  One  sees  very 
well  how  Pyrrhonism  grew  up.  Every  man  sees 
that  he  is  that  middle  point  whereof  every  thing 
may  be  affirmed  and  denied  with  equal  reason.  He 
is  old,  he  is  young,  he  is  very  wise,  he  is  altogether 
ignorant.  He  hears  and  feels  what  you  say  of  the 
seraphim,  and  of  the  tin-peddler.  There  is  no  per 
manent  wise  man  except  in  the  figment  of  the 
Stoics.  We  side  with  the  hero^  as  we  read  or 


132  SPIRITUAL  LAWS. 

paint,  against  the  coward  and  the  robber  ;  but  we 
have  been  ourselves  that  coward  and  robber,  and 
shall  be  again,  —  not  in  the  low  circumstance,  but 
in  comparison  with  the  grandeurs  possible  to  the 
soul. 

A  little  consideration  of  what  takes  place  around 
us  every  day  would  show  us  that  a  higher  law  than 
that  of  our  will  regulates  events  ;  that  our  painful 
labors  are  unnecessary  and  fruitless  ;  that  only  in 
our  easy,  simple,  spontaneous  action  are  we  strong, 
and  by  contenting  ourselves  with  obedience  we  be 
come  divine.  Belief  and  love,  —  a  believing  love 
will  relieve  us  of  a  vast  load  of  care.  O  my  broth 
ers,  God  exists.  There  is  a  soul  at  the  centre  of 
nature  and  over  the  will  of  every  man,  so  that 
none  of  us  can  wrong  the  universe.  It  has  so  in 
fused  its  strong  enchantment  into  nature  that  we 
prosper  when  we  accept  its  advice,  and  when  we 
struggle  to  wound  its  creatures  our  hands  are  glued 
to  our  sides,  or  they  beat  our  own  breasts.  The 
whole  course  of  things  goes  to  teach  us  faith.  We 
need  only  obey.  There  is  guidance  for  each  of 
us,  and  by  lowly  listening  we  shall  hear  the  right 
word.  Why  need  you  choose  so  painfully  your 
place  and  occupation  and  associates  and  modes  of 
action  and  of  entertainment  ?  Certainly  there  is  a 
possible  right  for  you  that  precludes  the  need  of 
balance  and  wilful  election.  For  you  there  is  a  re- 


SPIRITUAL  LAWS.  133 

ality,  a  fit  place  and  congenial  duties.  Place  your- 
solf  in  the  middle  of  the  stream  of  power  and  wis 
dom  which  animates  all  whom  it  floats,  and  you  are 
without  effort  impelled  to  truth,  to  right  and  a  per 
fect  contentment.  Then  you  put  all  gainsayers  in 
the  wrong.  Then  you  are  the  world,  the  meas 
ure  of  right,  of  truth,  of  beauty.  If  we  would  not 
be  mar-plots  with  our  miserable  interferences,  the 
work,  the  society,  letters,  arts,  science,  religion  of 
men  would  go  on  far  better  than  now,  and  the 
heaven  predicted  from  the  beginning  of  the  world, 
and  still  predicted  from  the  bottom  of  the  heart, 
would  organize  itself,  as  do  now  the  rose  and  the 
air  and  the  sun. 

I  say,  do  not  choose  ;  but  that  is  a  figure  of 
speech  by  which  I  would  distinguish  what  is  com 
monly  called  choice  among  men,  and  which  is  a 
partial  act,  the  choice  of  the  hands,  of  the  eyes,  of 
the  appetites,  and  not  a  whole  act  of  the  man.  But 
that  which  I  call  right  or  goodness,  is  the  choice  of 
my  constitution :  and  that  which  I  call  heaven, 
and  inwardly  aspire  after,  is  the  state  or  circum 
stance  desirable  to  my  constitution  ;  and  the  action 
which  I  in  all  my  years  tend  to  do,  is  the  work  for 
my  faculties.  We  must  hold  a  man  amenable  to 
reason  for  the  choice  of  his  daily  craft  or  profes 
sion.  It  is  not  an  excuse  any  longer  for  his  deeds 
that  they  are  the  custom  of  his  trade.  What  busi« 


134  SPIRITUAL  LAWS. 

ness  has  he  with  an  evil  trade  ?     Has  he  not  a  call 
ing  in  his  character  ? 

Each  man  has  his  own  vocation.  The  talent  is 
the  call.  There  is  one  direction  in  which  all  space 
is  open  to  him.  He  has  faculties  silently  inviting 
him  thither  to  endless  exertion.  He  is  like  a  ship 
in  a  river ;  he  runs  against  obstructions  on  every 
side  but  one,  on  that  side  all  obstruction  is  taken 
away  and  he  sweeps  serenely  over  a  deepening 
channel  into  an  infinite  sea.  This  talent  and  this 
call  depend  on  his  organization,  or  the  mode  in 
which  the  general  soul  incarnates  itself  in  him. 
He  inclines  to  do  something  which  is  easy  to  him 
and  good  when  it  is  done,  but  which  no  other  man 
can  do.  He  has  no  rival.  For  the  more  truly  he 
consults  his  own  powers,  the  more  difference  will 
his  work  exhibit  from  the  work  of  any  other.  His 
ambition  is  exactly  proportioned  to  his  powers. 
The  height  of  the  pinnacle  is  determined  by  the 
breadth  of  the  base.  Every  man  has  this  call  of 
the  power  to  do  somewhat  unique,  and  no  man  has 
any  other  call.  The  pretence  that  he  has  another 
call,  a  summons  by  name  and  personal  election  and 
outward  "  signs  that  mark  him  extraordinary  and 
not  in  the  roll  of  common  men,"  is  fanaticism,  and 
betrays  obtuseness  to  perceive  that  there  is  one 
mind  in  all  the  individuals,  and  no  respect  of  per< 
sons  therein. 


SPIRITUAL  LAWS.  135 

By  doing  his  work  he  makes  the  need  felt  which 
he  can  supply,  and  creates  the  taste  by  which  he  is 
enjoyed.  By  doing  his  own  work  he  unfolds  him 
self.  It  is  the  vice  of  our  public  speaking  that  it 
has  not  abandonment.  Somewhere,  not  only  every 
orator  but  every  man  should  let  out  all  the  length 
of  all  the  reins ;  should  find  or  make  a  frank  and 
hearty  expression  of  what  force  and  meaning  is  in 
him.  The  common  experience  is  that  the  man  fits 
himself  as  well  as  he  can  to  the  customary  details 
of  that  work  or  trade  he  falls  into,  and  tends  it  as 
a  dog  turns  a  spit.  Then  is  he  a  part  of  the  ma 
chine  he  moves ;  the  man  is  lost.  Until  he  can 
manage  to  communicate  himself  to  others  in  his 
full  stature  and  proportion,  he  does  not  yet  find  his 
vocation.  He  must  find  in  that  an  outlet  for  his 
character,  so  that  he  may  justify  his  work  to  their 
eyes.  If  the  labor  is  mean,  let  him  by  his  think 
ing  and  character  make  it  liberal.  Whatever  he 
knows  and  thinks,  whatever  in  his  apprehension  is 
worth  doing,  that  let  him  communicate,  or  men 
will  never  know  and  honor  him  aright.  Fool 
ish,  whenever  you  take  the  meanness  and  formality 
of  that  thing  you  do,  instead  of  converting  it  into 
the  obedient  spiracle  of  your  character  and  aims. 

We  like  only  such  actions  as  have  already  long 
had  the  praise  of  men,  and  do  not  perceive  that 
any  thing  man  can  do  may  be  divinely  done.  We 


136  SPIRITUAL  LAWS. 

think  greatness  entailed  or  organized  in  some  places 
or  duties,  in  certain  offices  or  occasions,  and  do  not 
see  that  Paganini  can  extract  rapture  from  a  cat 
gut,  and  Eulenstein  from  a  jews-harp,  and  a  nimble- 
fingered  lad  out  of  shreds  of  paper  with  his  scissors, 
and  Landseer  out  of  swine,  and  the  hero  out  of  the 
pitiful  habitation  and  company  in  which  he  was 
hidden.  What  we  call  obscure  condition  or  vulgar 
society  is  that  condition  and  society  whose  poetry  is 
not  yet  written,  but  which  you  shall  presently  make 
as  enviable  and  renowned  as  any.  In  our  estimates 
let  us  take  a  lesson  from  kings.  The  parts  of  hospi 
tality,  the  connection  of  families,  the  impressiveness 
of  death,  and  a  thousand  other  things,  royalty  makes 
its  own  estimate  of,  and  a  royal  mind  will.  To 
make  habitually  a  new  estimate,  —  that  is  elevation. 

What  a  man  does,  that  he  has.  What  has  he  to 
do  with  hope  or  fear?  In  himself  is  his  might. 
Let  him  regard  no  good  as  solid  but  that  which  is 
in  his  nature  and  which  must  grow  out  of  him  as 
long  as  he  exists.  The  goods  of  fortune  may  come 
and  go  like  summer  leaves  ;  let  him  scatter  them 
on  every  wind  as  the  momentary  signs  of  his  infin 
ite  productiveness. 

He  may  have  his  own.  A  man's  genius,  the 
quality  that  differences  him  from  every  other,  the 
susceptibility  to  one  class  of  influences,  the  selec 
tion  of  what  is  fit  for  him,  the  rejection  of  what  is 


SPIRITUAL  LAWS.  137 

tmfit,  determines  for  him  the  character  of  the  uni 
verse.  A  man  is  a  method,  a  progressive  arrange 
ment  ;  a  selecting  principle,  gathering  his  like  to 
him  wherever  he  goes.  He  takes  only  his  own  out 
of  the  multiplicity  that  sweeps  and  circles  round 
him.  He  is  like  one  of  those  booms  which  are  set 
out  from  the  shore  on  rivers  to  catch  drift-wood,  or 
like  the  loadstone  amongst  splinters  of  steel.  Those 
facts,  words,  persons,  which  dwell  in  his  memory 
without  his  being  able  to  say  why,  remain  because 
they  have  a  relation  to  him  not  less  real  for  being 
as  yet  unapprehended.  They  are  symbols  of  value 
to  him  as  they  can  interpret  parts  of  his  conscious 
ness  which  he  would  vainly  seek  words  for  in  the 
conventional  images  of  books  and  other  minds. 
What  attracts  my  attention  shall  have  it,  as  I  will 
go  to  the  man  who  knocks  at  my  door,  whilst  a 
thousand  persons  as  worthy  go  by  it,  to  whom  I 
give  no  regard.  It  is  enough  that  these  particulars 
speak  to  me.  A  few  anecdotes,  a  few  traits  of 
character,  manners,  face,  a  few  incidents,  have  an 
emphasis  in  your  memory  out  of  all  proportion  to 
their  apparent  significance  if  you  measure  them  by 
the  ordinary  standards.  They  relate  to  your  gift. 
Let  them  have  their  weight,  and  do  not  reject 
them  and  cast  about  for  illustration  and  facts  more 
usual  in  literature.  What  your  heart  thinks  great* 
is  great.  The  soul's  emphasis  is  always  right. 


138  SPIRITUAL  LAWS. 

Over  all  things  that  are  agreeable  to  his  nature 
and  genius  the  man  has  the  highest  right.  Every 
where  he  may  take  what  belongs  to  his  spiritual  es 
tate,  nor  can  he  take  anything  else  though  all  doors 
were  open,  nor  can  all  the  force  of  men  hinder 
him  from  taking  so  much.  It  is  vain  to  attempt  to 
keep  a  secret  from  one  who  has  a  right  to  know  it, 
It  will  tell  itself.  That  mood  into  which  a  friend 
can  bring  us  is  his  dominion  over  us.  To  the 
thoughts  of  that  state  of  mind  he  has  a  right.  All 
the  secrets  of  that  state  of  mind  he  can  compel. 
This  is  a  law  which  statesmen  use  in  practice.  All 
the  terrors  of  the  French  Republic,  which  held 
Austria  in  awe,  were  unable  to  command  her  di 
plomacy.  But  Napoleon  sent  to  Vienna  M.  de  Nar- 
bonne,  one  of  the  old  noblesse,  with  the  morals, 
manners  and  name  of  that  interest,  saying  that  it 
was  indispensable  to  send  to  the  old  aristocracy  of 
Europe  men  of  the  same  connection,  which  in  fact 
constitutes  a  sort  of  free-masonry.  M.  de  Narbonne 
in  less  than  a  fortnight  penetrated  all  the  secrets  of 
the  imperial  cabinet. 

Nothing  seems  so  easy  as  to  speak  and  to  be  un 
derstood.  Yet  a  man  may  come  to  find  that  the 
strongest  of  defences  and  of  ties,  —  that  he  has  been 
understood  ;  and  he  who  has  received  an  opinion 
may  come  to  find  it  the  most  inconvenient  of 
bonds. 


SPIRITUAL  LAWS.  139 

If  a  teacher  have  any  opinion  which  he  wishes  to 
conceal,  his  pupils  will  become  as  fully  indoctri 
nated  into  that  as  into  any  which  he  publishes.  If 
you  pour  water  into  a  vessel  twisted  into  coils  and 
angles,  it  is  vain  to  say,  I  will  pour  it  only  into 
this  or  that ;  —  it  will  find  its  level  in  all.  Men 
feel  and  act  the  consequences  of  your  doctrine 
without  being  able  to  show  how  they  follow.  Show 
us  an  arc  of  the  curve,  and  a  good  mathematician 
will  find  out  the  whole  figure.  We  are  always  rea 
soning  from  the  seen  to  the  unseen.  Hence  the 
perfect  intelligence  that  subsists  between  wise  men 
of  remote  ages.  A  man  cannot  bury  his  meanings 
so  deep  in  his  book  but  time  and  like-minded  men 
will  find  them.  Plato  had  a  secret  doctrine,  had 
he  ?  What  secret  can  he  conceal  from  the  eyes  of 
Bacon  ?  of  Montaigne  ?  of  Kant  ?  Therefore  Aris 
totle  said  of  his  works,  "  They  are  published  and 
not  published." 

No  man  can  learn  what  he  has  not  preparation 
for  learning,  however  near  to  his  eyes  is  the  ob 
ject.  A  chemist  may  tell  his  most  precious  secrets 
to  a  carpenter,  and  he  shall  be  never  the  wiser,  — <• 
the  secrets  he  would  not  utter  to  a  chemist  for  an 
estate.  God  screens  us  evermore  from  premature 
ideas.  Our  eyes  are  holden  that  we  cannot  see 
things  that  stare  us  in  the  face,  until  the  hour  ar 
rives  when  the  mind  is  ripened ;  then  we  behold 


140  SPIRITUAL  LAWS. 

them,  and  the  time  when  we  saw  them  not  is  like  a 
dream. 

Not  in  nature  but  in  man  is  all  the  beauty  and 
worth  he  sees.  The  world  is  very  empty,  and  is  in 
debted  to  this  gilding,  exalting  soul  for  all  its 
pride.  "  Earth  fills  her  lap  with  splendors  "  not 
her  own.  The  vale  of  Tempe,  Tivoli  and  Rome  are 
earth  and  water,  rocks  and  sky.  There  are  as  good 
earth  and  water  in  a  thousand  places,  yet  how  un- 
affecting  ! 

People  are  not  the  better  for  the  sun  and  moon, 
the  horizon  and  the  trees ;  as  it  is  not  observed  that 
the  keepers  of  Roman  galleries  or  the  valets  of 
painters  have  any  elevation  of  thought,  or  that  li 
brarians  are  wiser  men  than  others.  There  are 
graces  in  the  demeanor  of  a  polished  and  noble  per 
son  which  are  lost  upon  the  eye  of  a  churl.  These 
are  like  the  stars  whose  light  has  not  yet  reached 
us. 

He  may  see  what  he  maketh.  Our  dreams  are 
the  sequel  of  our  waking  knowledge.  The  visions 
of  the  night  bear  some  proportion  to  the  visions  of 
the  day.  Hideous  dreams  are  exaggerations  of  the 
sins  of  the  day.  We  see  our  evil  affections  em 
bodied  in  bad  physiognomies.  On  the  Alps  the 
traveller  sometimes  beholds  his  own  shadow  magni 
fied  to  a  giant,  so  that  every  gesture  of  his  hand  is 
terrific.  "  My  children,"  said  an  old  man  to  his 


SPIRITUAL  LAWS.  141 

boys  scared  by  a  figure  in  the  dark  entry,  "my 
children,  you  will  never  see  anything  worse  than 
yourselves."  As  in  dreams,  so  in  the  scarcely  less 
fluid  events  of  the  world  every  man  sees  himself  in 
colossal,  without  knowing  that  it  is  himself.  The 
good,  compared  to  the  evil  which  he  sees,  is  as  his 
own  good  to  his  own  evil.  Every  quality  of  his 
mind  is  magnified  in  some  one  acquaintance,  and 
every  emotion  of  his  heart  in  some  one.  He  is  like 
a  quincunx  of  trees,  which  counts  five,  —  east,  west, 
north,  or  south ;  or  an  initial,  medial,  and  terminal 
acrostic.  And  why  not  ?  He  cleaves  to  one  per 
son  and  avoids  another,  according  to  their  likeness 
or  unlikeness  to  himself,  truly  seeking  himself  in 
his  associates  and  moreover  in  his  trade  and  habits 
and  gestures  and  meats  and  drinks,  and  comes  at 
last  to  be  faithfully  represented  by  every  view  you 
take  of  his  circumstances. 

He  may  read  what  he  writes.  What  can  we  see 
or  acquire  but  what  we  are  ?  You  have  observed  a 
skilful  man  reading  Virgil.  Well,  that  author  is  a 
thousand  books  to  a  thousand  persons.  Take  the 
book  into  your  two  hands  and  read  your  eyes  out, 
you  will  never  find  what  I  find.  If  any  ingenious 
reader  would  have  a  monopoly  of  the  wisdom  or 
delight  he  gets,  he  is  as  secure  now  the  book  is 
Englished,  as  if  it  were  imprisoned  in  the  Pelews' 
tongue.  It'is  with  a  good  book  as  it  is  with  good 


142  SPIRITUAL  LAWS. 

company.  Introduce  a  base  person  among  gentle 
men,  it  is  all  to  no  purpose  ;  he  is  not  their  fellow. 
Every  society  protects  itself.  The  company  is  per 
fectly  safe,  and  he  is  not  one  of  them,  though  his 
body  is  in  the  room. 

What  avails  it  to  fight  with  the  eternal  laws  of 
mind,  which  adjust  the  relation  of  all  persons  to 
each  other  by  the  mathematical  measure  of  their 
havings  and  beings  ?  Gertrude  is  enamored  of  Guy ; 
how  high,  how  aristocratic,  how  Roman  his  mien 
and  manners !  to  live  with  him  were  life  indeed, 
and  no  purchase  is  too  great ;  and  heaven  and  earth 
are  moved  to  that  end.  Well,  Gertrude  has  Guy ; 
but  what  now  avails  how  high,  how  aristocratic, 
how  Roman  his  mien  and  manners,  if  his  heart  and 
aims  are  in  the  senate,  in  the  theatre  and  in  the 
billiard-room,  and  she  has  no  aims,  110  conversation 
that  can  enchant  her  graceful  lord  ? 

He  shall  have  his  own  society.  We  can  love 
nothing  but  nature.  The  most  wonderful  talents, 
the  most  meritorious  exertions  really  avail  very  lit 
tle  with  us  ;  but  nearness  or  likeness  of  nature,  — 
how  beautiful  is  the  ease  of  its  victory  !  Persons 
approach  us,  famous  for  their  beauty,  for  their  ac 
complishments,  worthy  of  all  wonder  for  their 
charms  and  gifts  ;  they  dedicate  their  whole  skill  to 
the  hour  and  the  company,  —  with  very  imperfect 
result.  To  be  sure  it  would  be  ungrateful  in  us  not 


SPIRITUAL  LAWS.  143 

to  praise  them  loudly.  Then,  when  all  is  done,  a 
person  of  related  mind,  a  brother  or  sister  by  na 
ture,  comes  to  us  so  softly  and  easily,  so  nearly  and 
intimately,  as  if  it  were  the  blood  in  our  proper 
veins,  that  we  feel  as  if  some  one  was  gone,  instead 
of  another  having  come  ;  we  are  utterly  relieved 
and  refreshed  ;  it  is  a  sort  of  joyful  solitude.  We 
foolishly  think  in  our  days  of  sin  that  we  must 
court  friends  by  compliance  to  the  customs  of  soci 
ety,  to  its  dress,  its  breeding,  and  its  estimates. 
But  only  that  soul  can  be  my  friend  which  I  en 
counter  on  the  line  of  my  own  march,  that  soul  to 
which  I  do  not  decline  and  which  does  not  decline 
to  me,  but,  native  of  the  same  celestial  latitude,  re 
peats  in  its  own  all  my  experience.  The  scholar 
forgets  himself  and  apes  the  customs  and  costumes 
of  the  man  of  the  world  to  deserve  the  smile  of 
beauty,  and  follows  some  giddy  girl,  not  yet  taught 
by  religious  passion  to  know  the  noble  woman  with 
all  that  is  serene,  oracular  and  beautiful  in  her  soul. 
Let  him  be  great,  and  love  shall  follow  him.  Noth 
ing  is  more  deeply  punished  than  the  neglect  of  the 
affinities  by  which  alone  society  should  be  formed, 
and  the  insane  levity  of  choosing  associates  by  oth 
ers'  eyes. 

He  may  set  his  own  rate.  It  is  a  maxim  worthy 
of  all  acceptation  that  a  man  may  have  that  allow 
ance  he  takes.  Take  the  place  and  attitude  which 


144  SPIRITUAL  LAWS. 

belong  to  you,  and  all  men  acquiesce.  The  world 
must  be  just.  It  leaves  every  man,  with  profound 
unconcern,  to  set  his  own  rate.  Hero  or  driveller, 
it  meddles  not  in  the  matter.  It  will  certainly  ac 
cept  your  own  measure  of  your  doing  and  being, 
whether  you  sneak  about  and  deny  your  own  name, 
or  whether  you  see  your  work  produced  to  the  con 
cave  sphere  of  the  heavens,  one  with  the  revolution 
of  the  stars. 

The  same  reality  pervades  all  teaching.  The 
man  may  teach  by  doing,  and  not  otherwise.  If  he 
can  communicate  himself  he  can  teach,  but  not  by 
words.  He  teaches  who  gives,  and  he  learns  who 
receives.  There  is  no  teaching  until  the  pupil  is 
brought  into  the  same  state  or  principle  in  which 
you  are  ;  a  transfusion  takes  place  ;  he  is  you  and 
you  are  he  ;  then  is  a  teaching,  and  by  no  unfriendly 
chance  or  bad  company  can  he  ever  quite  lose  the 
benefit.  But  your  propositions  run  out  of  one  ear 
as  they  ran  in  at  the  other.  We  see  it  advertised 
that  Mr.  Grand  will  deliver  an  oration  on  the  Fourth 
of  July,  and  Mr.  Hand  before  the  Mechanics'  As 
sociation,  and  we  do  not  go  thither,  because  we 
know  that  these  gentlemen  will  not  communicate 
their  own  character  and  experience  to  the  company. 
If  we  had  reason  to  expect  such  a  confidence  we 
should  go  through  all  inconvenience  and  opposition. 
The  sick  would  be  carried  in  litters.  But  a  public 


SPIRITUAL  LAWS.  145 

oration  is  an  escapade,  a  non-committal,  an  apology, 
a  gag,  and  not  a  communication,  not  a  speech,  not 
a  man. 

A  like  Nemesis  presides  over  all  intellectual 
works.  We  have  yet  to  learn  that  the  thing  ut 
tered  in  words  is  not  therefore  affirmed.  It  must 
affirm  itself,  or  no  forms  of  logic  or  of  oath  can 
give  it  evidence.  The  sentence  must  also  contain 
its  own  apology  for  being  spoken. 

The  effect  of  any  writing  on  the  public  mind  is 
mathematically  measurable  by  its  depth  of  thought. 
How  much  water  does  it  draw  ?  If  it  awaken  you 
to  think,  if  it  lift  you  from  your  feet  with  the  great 
voice  of  eloquence,  then  the  effect  is  to  be  wide, 
slow,  permanent,  over  the  minds  of  men  ;  if  the 
pages  instruct  you  not,  they  will  die  like  flies  in  the 
hour.  The  way  to  speak  and  write  what  shall  not 
go  out  of  fashion  is  to  speak  and  write  sincerely. 
The  argument  which  has  not  power  to  reach  my  own 
practice,  I  may  well  doubt  will  fail  to  reach  yours. 
But  take  Sidney's  maxim  :  —  "  Look  in  thy  heart, 
und  write."  He  that  writes  to  himself  writes  to  an 
eternal  public.  That  statement  only  is  fit  to  be 
made  public  which  you  have  come  at  in  attempting 
to  satisfy  your  own  curiosity.  The  writer  who 
takes  his  subject  from  his  ear  and  not  from  his 
heart,  should  know  that  he  has  lost  as  much  as  he 
lieems  to  have  gained,  and  when  the  empty  book 

VOL.  II.  10 


146  SPIRITUAL  LAWS. 

has  gathered  all  its  praise,  and  half  the  people  say, 
'  What  poetry  !  what  genius  ! '  it  still  needs  fuel  to 
make  fire.  That  only  profits  which  is  profitable. 
Life  alone  can  impart  life ;  and  though  we  should 
burst  we  can  only  be  valued  as  we  make  ourselves 
valuable.  There  is  no  luck  in  literary  reputation,, 
They  who  make  up  the  final  verdict  upon  every 
book  are  not  the  partial  and  noisy  readers  of  the 
hour  when  it  appears,  but  a  court  as  of  angels,  a 
public  not  to  be  bribed,  not  to  be  entreated  and  not 
to  be  overawed,  decides  upon  every  man's  title  to 
fame.  Only  those  books  come  down  which  deserve 
to  last.  Gilt  edges,  vellum  and  morocco,  and  pres 
entation-copies  to  all  the  libraries  will  not  preserve 
a  book  in  circulation  beyond  its  intrinsic  date.  It 
must  go  with  all  Walpole's  Noble  and  Royal  Au 
thors  to  its  fate.  Blackmore,  Kotzebue,  or  Pollok 
may  endure  for  a  night,  but  Moses  and  Homer 
stand  for  ever.  There  are  not  in  the  world  at  any 
one  time  more  than  a  dozen  persons  who  read  and 
understand  Plato,  —  never  enough  to  pay  for  an 
edition  of  his  works  ;  yet  to  every  generation  these 
come  duly  down,  for  the  sake  of  those  few  persons, 
as  if  God  brought  them  in  his  hand.  "  No  book," 
said  Bentley,  "  was  ever  written  down  by  any  but 
itself."  The  permanence  of  all  books  is  fixed  by 
no  effort,  friendly  or  hostile,  but  by  their  own  spe 
cific  gravity,  or  the  intrinsic  importance  of  their 


SPIRITUAL  LAWS. 

contents  to  the  constant  mind  of  man.  "  Do  not 
trouble  yourself  too  much  about  the  light  on  your 
statue,"  said  Michael  Angelo  to  the  young  sculptor; 
"  the  light  of  the  public  square  will  test  its  value." 

In  like  manner  the  effect  of  every  action  is  meas 
ured  by  the  depth  of  the  sentiment  from  which  it 
proceeds.  The  great  man  knew  not  that  he  was 
great.  It  took  a  century  or  two  for  that  fact  to 
appear.  What  he  did,  he  did  because  he  must  ; 
it  was  the  most  natural  thing  in  the  world,  and 
grew  out  of  the  circumstances  of  the  moment.  But 
now,  every  thing  he  did,  even  to  the  lifting  of  his 
finger  or  the  eating  of  bread,  looks  large,  all- 
related,  and  is  called  an  institution. 

These  are  the  demonstrations  in  a  few  particu 
lars  of  the  genius  of  nature ;  they  show  the  direction 
of  the  stream.  But  the  stream  is  blood ;  every 
drop  is  alive.  Truth  has  not  single  victories  ;  all 
things  are  its  organs,  —  not  only  dust  and  stones, 
but  errors  arid  lies.  The  laws  of  disease,  phy 
sicians  say,  are  as  beautiful  as  the  laws  of  health. 
Our  philosophy  is  affirmative  and  readily  accepts 
the  testimony  of  negative  facts,  as  every  shadow 
points  to  the  sun.  By  a  divine  necessity  every 
fact  in  nature  is  constrained  to  offer  its  testimony. 

Human  character  evermore  publishes  itself.  The 
most  fugitive  deed  and  word,  the  mere  air  of  doing 
a  thing,  the  intimated  purpose,  expresses  character. 


148  SPIRITUAL  LAWS. 

If  you  act  you  show  character ;  if  you  sit  still,  if 
you  sleep,  you  show  it.  You  think  because  you 
have  spoken  nothing  when  others  spoke,  and  have 
given  no  opinion  on  the  times,  on  the  church,  on 
slavery,  on  marriage,  on  socialism,  on  secret  socie 
ties,  on  the  college,  on  parties  and  persons,  that 
your  verdict  is  still  expected  with  curiosity  as  a  re 
served  wisdom.  Far  otherwise ;  your  silence  an 
swers  very  loud.  You  have  no  oracle  to  utter,  and 
your  fellow-men  have  learned  that  you  cannot  help 
them;  for  oracles  speak.  Doth  not  Wisdom  cry 
and  Understanding  put  forth  her  voice  ? 

Dreadful  limits  are  set  in  nature  to  the  powers 
of  dissimulation.  Truth  tyrannizes  over  the  unwill 
ing  members  of  the  body.  Faces  never  lie,  it  is 
said.  No  man  need  be  deceived  who  will  study  the 
changes  of  expression.  When  a  man  speaks  the 
truth  in  the  spirit  of  truth,  his  eye  is  as  clear 
as  the  heavens.  When  he  has  base  ends  and 
speaks  falsely,  the  eye  is  muddy  and  sometimes 
asquint. 

I  have  heard  an  experienced  counsellor  say  that 
he  never  feared  the  effect  upon  a  jury  of  a  lawyer 
who  does  not  believe  in  his  heart  that  his  client 
ought  to  have  a  verdict.  If  he  does  not  believe 
it  his  unbelief  will  appear  to  the  jury,  despite  all 
his  protestations,  and  will  become  their  unbelief. 
This  is  that  law  whereby  a  work  of  art,  of  whateves 


SPIRITUAL  LAWS.  149 

kind,  sets  us  in  the  same  state  of  mind  wherein  the 
artist  was  when  he  made  it.  That  which  we  do 
not  believe  we  cannot  adequately  say,  though  we 
may  repeat  the  words  never  so  often.  It  was  this 
conviction  which  Swedenborg  expressed  when  he 
described  a  group  of  persons  in  the  spiritual  world 
endeavoring  in  vain  to  articulate  a  proposition 
which  they  did  not  believe  ;  but  they  could  not, 
though  they  twisted  and  folded  their  lips  even  to 
indignation. 

A  man  passes  for  that  he  is  worth.  Very  idle  is 
all  curiosity  concerning  other  people's  estimate  of 
us,  and  all  fear  of  remaining  unknown  is  not  less 
so.  If  a  man  know  that  he  can  do  any  thing,  — 
that  he  can  do  it  better  than  any  one  else,  —  he 
has  a  pledge  of  the  acknowledgment  of  that  fact 
by  all  persons.  The  world  is  full  of  judgment- 
days,  and  into  every  assembly  that  a  man  enters, 
in  every  action  he  attempts,  he  is  gauged  and 
stamped.  In  every  troop  of  boys  that  whoop  and 
run  in  each  yard  and  square,  a  new-comer  is  as 
well  and  accurately  weighed  in  the  course  of  a  few 
days  and  stamped  with  his  right  number,  as  if  he 
had  undergone  a  formal  trial  of  his  strength,  speed 
and  temper.  A  stranger  comes  from  a  distant 
school,  with  better  dress,  with  trinkets  in  his  pock 
ets,  with  airs  and  pretensions ;  an  older  boy  says 
to  himself,  4  It 's  of  no  use ;  we  shall  find  him  out 


150  SPIRITUAL  LAWS. 

to-morrow.'  '  What  has  he  done  ?  '  is  the  divino 
question  which  searches  men  and  transpierces 
every  false  reputation.  A  fop  may  sit  in  any  chair 
of  the  world  nor  be  distinguished  for  his  hour  from 
Homer  and  Washington  ;  but  there  need  never  be 
any  doubt  concerning  the  respective  ability  of  hu 
man  beings.  Pretension  may  sit  still,  but  cannot 
act.  Pretension  never  feigned  an  act  of  real  great 
ness.  Pretension  never  wrote  an  Iliad,  nor  drove 
back  Xerxes,  nor  christianized  the  world,  nor  abol 
ished  slavery. 

As  much  virtue  as  there  is,  so  much  appears  ;  as 
much  goodness  as  there  is,  so  much  reverence  it 
commands.  All  the  devils  respect  virtue.  The 
high,  the  generous,  the  self-devoted  sect  will  always 
instruct  and  command  mankind.  Never  was  a  sin 
cere  word  utterly  lost.  Never  a  magnanimity  fell 
to  the  ground,  but  there  is  some  heart  to  greet  and 
accept  it  unexpectedly.  A  man  passes  for  that 
he  is  worth.  What  he  is  engraves  itself  on  his 
face,  on  his  form,  on  his  fortunes,  in  letters  of 
light.  Concealment  avails  him  nothing,  boasting 
nothing.  There  is  confession  in  the  glances  of  our 
eyes,  in  our  smiles,  in  salutations,  and  the  grasp  of 
hands.  His  sin  bedaubs  him,  mars  all  his  good  im 
pression.  Men  know  not  why  they  do  not  trust 
him,  but  they  do  not  trust  him.  His  vice  glasses 
his  eye,  cuts  lines  of  mean  expression  in  his  cheek, 


SPIRITUAL  LAWS.  151 

pinches  the  nose,  sets  the  mark  of  the  beast  on  the 
hack  of  the  head,  and  writes  O  fool !  fool !  on  the 
forehead  of  a  king. 

If  you  would  not  be  known  to  do  any  thing, 
never  do  it.  A  man  may  play  the  fool  in  the  drifts 
of  a  desert,  but  every  grain  of  sand  shall  seem  to 
see.  He  may  be  a  solitary  eater,  but  he  cannot 
keep  his  foolish  counsel.  A  broken  complexion,  a 
swinish  look,  ungenerous  acts  and  the  want  of  due 
knowledge,  —  all  blab.  Can  a  cook,  a  Chiffinch, 
an  lachimo  be  mistaken  for  Zeno  or  Paul  ?  Con 
fucius  exclaimed,  —  "  How  can  a  man  be  con 
cealed  ?  How  can  a  man  be  concealed  ?  " 

On  the  other  hand,  the  hero  fears  not  that  if  he 
withhold  the  avowal  of  a  just  and  brave  act  it  will 
go  unwitnessed  and  unloved.  One  knows  it,  — 
himself,  —  and  is  pledged  by  it  to  sweetness  of 
peace  and  to  nobleness  of  aim  which  will  prove  in 
the  end  a  better  proclamation  of  it  than  the  relat 
ing  of  the  incident.  Virtue  is  the  adherence  in  ac 
tion  to  the  nature  of  things,  and  the  nature  of 
things  makes  it  prevalent.  It  consists  in  a  perpet 
ual  substitution  of  being  for  seeming,  and  with  sub 
lime  propriety  God  is  described  as  saying,  I  AM. 

The  lesson  which  these  observations  convey  is, 
Be,  and  not  seem.  Let  us  acquiesce.  Let  us  take 
our  bloated  nothingness  out  of  the  path  of  the  di 
vine  circuits.  Let  us  unlearn  our  wisdom  of  the 


152  SPIRITUAL  LAWS. 

world.  Let  us  lie  low  in  the  Lord's  power,  and 
learn  that  truth  alone  makes  rich  and  great. 

If  you  visit  your  friend,  why  need  you  apologize 
for  not  having  visited  him,  and  waste  his  time  and 
deface  your  own  act?  Visit  him  now.  Let  him 
feel  that  the  highest  love  has  come  to  see  him,  in. 
thee  its  lowest  organ.  Or  why  need  you  torment 
yourself  and  friend  by  secret  self-reproaches  that 
you  have  not  assisted  him  or  complimented  him 
with  gifts  and  salutations  heretofore  ?  Be  a  gift 
and  a  benediction.  Shine  with  real  light  and  not 
with  the  borrowed  reflection  of  gifts.  Common 
men  are  apologies  for  men;  they  bow  the  head, 
excuse  themselves  with  prolix  reasons,  and  accumu 
late  appearances  because  the  substance  is  not. 

We  are  full  of  these  superstitions  of  sense,  the 
worship  of  magnitude.  We  call  the  poet  inactive, 
because  he  is  not  a  president,  a  merchant,  or  a  por 
ter.  We  adore  an  institution,  and  do  not  see  that 
it  is  founded  on  a  thought  which  we  have.  But 
real  action  is  in  silent  moments.  The  epochs  of 
our  life  are  not  in  the  visible  facts  of  our  choice  of 
a  calling,  our  marriage,  our  acquisition  of  an  office, 
and  the  like,  but  in  a  silent  thought  by  the  way 
side  as  we  walk ;  in  a  thought  which  revises  our  en 
tire  manner  of  life  and  says,  — '  Thus  hast  thou 
done,  but  it  were  better  thus.'  And  all  our  after 
years,  like  menials,  serve  and  wait  on  this,  and  ac* 


SPIRITUAL  LAWS.  153 

cording  to  their  ability  execute  its  will.  This  re- 
visal  or  correction  is  a  constant  force,  which,  as  a 
tendency,  reaches  through  our  lifetime.  The  ob 
ject  of  the  man,  the  aim  of  these  moments,  is  to 
make  daylight  shine  through  him,  to  suffer  the  law 
to  traverse  his  whole  being  without  obstruction,  so 
that  on  what  point  soever  of  his  doing  your  eye 
falls  it  shall  report  truly  of  his  character,  whether 
it  be  his  diet,  his  house,  his  religious  forms,  his  so 
ciety,  his  mirth,  his  vote,  his  opposition.  Now  he 
is  not  homogeneous,  but  heterogeneous,  and  the  ray 
does  not  traverse  ;  there  are  no  thorough  lights, 
but  the  eye  of  the  beholder  is  puzzled,  detecting 
many  unlike  tendencies  and  a  life  not  yet  at  one. 

Why  should  we  make  it  a  point  with  our  false 
modesty  to  disparage  that  man  we  are  and  that 
form  of  being  assigned  to  us  ?  A  good  man  is  con 
tented.  I  love  and  honor  Epaminondas,  but  I  do 
not  wish  to  be  Epaminondas.  I  hold  it  more  just 
to  love  the  world  of  this  hour  than  the  world  of  his 
hour.  Nor  can  you,  if  I  am  true,  excite  me  to  the 
least  uneasiness  by  saying,  '  He  acted  and  thou  sit- 
test  still.'  I  see  action  to  be  good,  when  the  need 
is,  and  sitting  still  to  be  also  good.  Epaminondas, 
if  he  was  the  man  I  take  him  for,  would  have  sat 
still  with  joy  and  peace,  if  his  lot  had  been  mine., 
Heaven  is  large,  and  affords  space  for  all  modes  of 
love  and  fortitude.  Why  should  we  be  busybodies 


154  SPIRITUAL  LAWS. 

and  superserviceable  ?  Action  and  inaction  are 
alike  to  the  true.  One  piece  of  the  tree  is  cut  for  a 
weathercock  and  one  for  the  sleeper  of  a  bridge ;, 
the  virtue  of  the  wood  is  apparent  in  both. 

I  desire  not  to  disgrace  the  soul.  .The  fact  that 
I  am  here  certainly  shows  me  that  the  soul  had  need 
of  an  organ  here.  Shall  I  not  assume  the  post? 
Shall  I  skulk  and  dodge  and  duck  with  my  unsea 
sonable  apologies  and  vain  modesty  and  imagine 
my  being  here  impertinent?  less  pertinent  than 
Epaminondas  or  Homer  being  there  ?  and  that 
the  soul  did  not  know  its  own  needs?  Besides, 
without  any  reasoning  on  the  matter,  I  have  no 
discontent.  The  good  soul  nourishes  me  and  un 
locks  new  magazines  of  power  and  enjoyment  to 
me  every  day.  I  will  not  meanly  decline  the  im 
mensity  of  good,  because  I  have  heard  that  it  has 
come  to  others  in  another  shape. 

Besides,  why  should  we  be  cowed  by  the  name  of 
Action  ?  'T  is  a  trick  of  the  senses,  —  no  more. 
We  know  that  the  ancestor  of  every  action  is  a 
thought.  The  poor  mind  does  not  seem  to  itself 
to  be  any  thing  unless  it  have  an  outside  badge,  — 
some  Gentoo  diet,  or  Quaker  coat,  or  Calvinistic 
prayer-meeting,  or  philanthropic  society,  or  a  great 
donation,  or  a  high  office,  or,  any  how,  some  wild 
contrasting  action  to  testify  that  it  is  somewhat. 
The  rich  mind  lies  in  the  sun  and  sleeps,  and  is  Na 
ture.  To  think  is  to  act. 


SPIRITUAL  LAWS.  156 

Let  us,  if  we  must  have  great  actions,  make  our 
own  so.  All  action  is  of  an  infinite  elasticity,  and 
the  least  admits  of  being  inflated  with  the  celestial 
air  until  it  eclipses  the  sun  and  moon.  Let  us 
seek  one  peace  by  fidelity.  Let  me  heed  my  duties. 
Why  need  I  go  gadding  into  the  scenes  and  philos° 
ophy  of  Greek  and  Italian  history  before  I  have 
justified  myself  to  my  benefactors  ?  How  dare  I 
read  Washington's  campaigns  when  I  have  not  an 
swered  the  letters  of  my  own  correspondents  ?  Is 
not  that  a  just  objection  to  much  of  our  reading  ? 
It  is  a  pusillanimous  desertion  of  our  work  to  gaze 
after  our  neighbors.  It  is  peeping.  Byron  says 
of  Jack  Bunting,  — 

"  He  knew  not  what  to  say,  and  so  he  swore." 

I  may  say  it  of  our  preposterous  use  of  books,  —  He 
knew  not  what  to  do,  and  so  he  read.  I  can  think 
of  nothing  to  fill  my  time  with,  and  I  find  the  Life 
of  Brant.  It  is  a  very  extravagant  compliment  to 
pay  to  Brant,  or  to  General  Schuyler,  or  to  Gen 
eral  Washington.  My  time  should  be  as  good  as 
their  time,  —  my  facts,  my  net  of  relations,  as  good 
as  theirs,  or  either  of  theirs.  Rather  let  me  do  my 
work  so  well  that  other  idlers  if  they  choose  may 
compare  my  texture  with  the  texture  of  these  and 
find  it  identical  with  the  best. 

This  over-estimate  of  the  possibilities  of  Paul  and 


156  SPIRITUAL  LAWS. 

Pericles,  this  under-estimate  of  our  own,  comes  from 
a  neglect  of  the  fact  of  an  identical  nature.  Bona 
parte  knew  but  one  merit,  and  rewarded  in  one 
and  the  same  way  the  good  soldier,  the  good  as 
tronomer,  the  good  poet,  the  good  player.  The 
poet  uses  the  names  of  Caesar,  of  Tamerlane,  of 
Bonduca,  of  Belisarius ;  the  painter  uses  the  con 
ventional  story  of  the  Virgin  Mary,  of  Paul,  of 
Peter.  He  does  not  therefore  defer  to  the  nature 
of  these  accidental  men,  of  these  stock  heroes.  If 
the  poet  write  a  true  drama,  then  he  is  Caesar,  and 
not  the  player  of  Caesar ;  then  the  selfsame  strain 
of  thought,  emotion  as  pure,  wit  as  subtle,  motions 
as  swift,  mounting,  extravagant,  and  a  heart  as 
great,  self-sufficing,  dauntless,  which  on  the  waves 
of  its  love  and  hope  can  uplift  all  that  is  reckoned 
solid  and  precious  in  the  world,  —  palaces,  gardens, 
money,  navies,  kingdoms,  —  marking  its  own  in 
comparable  worth  by  the  slight  it  casts  on  these 
gauds  of  men  ;  —  these  all  are  his,  and  by  the  power 
of  these  he  rouses  the  nations.  Let  a  man  believe 
in  God,  and  not  in  names  and  places  and  persons. 
Let  the  great  soul  incarnated  in  some  woman's  form, 
poor  and  sad  and  single,  in  some  Dolly  or  Joan,  go 
out  to  service  and  sweep  chambers  and  scour  floors, 
and  its  effulgent  daybeams  cannot  be  muffled  or 
hid,  but  to  sweep  and  scour  will  instantly  appear 
supreme  and  beautiful  actions,  the  top  and  radiance 


SPIRITUAL  LAWS.  157 

of  human  life,  and  all  people  will  get  mops  and 
brooms  ;  until,  lo !  suddenly  the  great  soul  has  en 
shrined  itself  in  some  other  form  and  done  some 
other  deed,  and  that  is  now  the  flower  and  head 
of  all  living  nature. 

We  are  the  photometers,  we  the  irritable  gold- 
leaf  and  tinfoil  that  measure  the  accumulations  of 
the  subtle  element.  We  know  the  authentic  effects 
of  the  true  fire  through  every  one  of  its  million  dis 
guises. 


LOVK 


I  was  as  a  gem  concealed ; 
Me  my  burning  ray  revealed." 

Koran* 


V. 

LOVE. 


EVERY  promise  of  the  soul  has  innumerable  ful« 
filments  ;  each  of  its  joys  ripens  into  a  new  want. 
Nature,  uncontainable,  flowing,  forelooking,  in  the 
first  sentiment  of  kindness  anticipates  already  a 
benevolence  which  shall  lose  all  particular  regards 
in  its  general  light.  The  introduction  to  this  felic 
ity  is  in  a  private  and  tender  relation  of  one  to  one, 
which  is  the  enchantment  of  human  life  ;  which, 
like  a  certain  divine  rage  and  enthusiasm,  seizes  on 
man  at  one  period  and  works  a  revolution  in  his 
mind  and  body  ;  unites  him  to  his  race,  pledges 
him  to  the  domestic  and  civic  relations,  carries  him 
with  new  sympathy  into  nature,  enhances  the  power 
of  the  senses,  opens  the  imagination,  adds  to  his 
character  heroic  and  sacred  attributes,  establishes 
marriage  and  gives  permanence  to  human  society* 

The  natural  association  of  the  sentiment  of  love 
with  the  heyday  of  the  blood  seems  to  require  that 
in  order  to  portray  it  in  vivid  tints,  which  every 
youth  and  maid  should  confess  to  be  true  to  their 

VOL.   II.  11 


162  LOVE. 

throbbing  experience,  one  must  not  be  too  old.  The 
delicious  fancies  of  youth  reject  the  least  savor  of 
a  mature  philosophy,  as  chilling  with  age  and  ped 
antry  their  purple  bloom.  And  therefore  I  know 
I  incur  the  imputation  of  unnecessary  hardness  ant] 
stoicism  from  those  who  compose  the  Court  and 
Parliament  of  Love.  But  from  these  formidable 
censors  I  shall  appeal  to  my  seniors.  For  it  is  to 
be  considered  that  this  passion  of  which  we  speak, 
though  it  begin  with  the  young,  yet  forsakes  not  the 
old,  or  rather  suffers  no  one  who  is  its  servant  to 
grow  old,  but  makes  the  aged  participators  of  it  not 
less  than  the  tender  maiden,  though  in  a  different 
and  nobler  sort.  For  it  is  a  fire  that  kindling  its 
first  embers  in  the  narrow  nook  of  a  private  bosom, 
caught  from  a  wandering  spark  out  of  another  pri 
vate  heart,  glows  and  enlarges  until  it  warms  and 
beams  upon  multitudes  of  men  and  women,  upon 
the  universal  heart  of  all,  and  so  lights  up  the 
whole  world  and  all  nature  with  its  generous  flames. 
It  matters  not  therefore  whether  we  attempt  to  de 
scribe  the  passion  at  twenty,  thirty,  or  at  eighty 
years.  He  who  paints  it  at  the  first  period  will 
lose  some  of  its  later,  he  who  paints  it  at  the  last, 
some  of  its  earlier  traits.  Only  it  is  to  be  hoped 
that  by  patience  and  the  Muses'  aid  we  may  attain 
to  that  inward  view  of  the  law  which  shall  describe 
a  truth  ever  young  and  beautiful,  so  central  that  it 


LOVE.  163 

shall  commend  itself  to  the  eye  at  whatever  angle 
beholden. 

And  the  first  condition  is  that  we  must  leave  a 
too  close  and  lingering  adherence  to  facts,  and  study 
the  sentiment  as  it  appeared  in  hope,  and  not  in 
history.  For  each  man  sees  his  own  life  defaced 
and  disfigured,  as  the  life  of  man  is  not  to  his  im 
agination.  Each  man  sees  over  his  own  experience 
a  certain  stain  of  error,  whilst  that  of  other  men 
looks  fair  and  ideal.  Let  any  man  go  back  to  those 
delicious  relations  which  make  the  beauty  of  his 
life,  which  have  given  him  sincerest  instruction  and 
nourishment,  he  will  shrink  and  moan.  Alas !  I 
know  not  why,  but  infinite  compunctions  embitter 
in  mature  life  the  remembrances  of  budding  joy, 
and  cover  every  beloved  name.  Every  thing  is 
beautiful  seen  from  the  point  of  the  intellect,  or  as 
truth.  But  all  is  sour  if  seen  as  experience.  De 
tails  are  melancholy ;  the  plan  is  seemly  and  noble. 
In  the  actual  world  —  the  painful  kingdom  of  time 
and  place  —  dwell  care  and  canker  and  fear.  With 
thought,  with  the  ideal,  is  immortal  hilarity,  the 
rose  of  joy.  Round  it  all  the  Muses  sing.  But 
grief  cleaves  to  names  and  persons  and  the  partial 
interests  of  to-day  and  yesterday. 

The  strong  bent  of  nature  is  seen  in  the  propor 
tion  which  this  topic  of  personal  relations  usurps  in 
the  conversation  of  society.  What  do  we  wish  to 


164  LOVE. 

know  of  any  worthy  person  so  much  as  how  he  has 
sped  in  the  history  of  this  sentiment  ?  What  books 
in  the  circulating  library  circulate  ?  How  we  glow 
over  these  novels  of  passion,  when  the  story  is  told 
with  any  spark  of  truth  and  nature !  And  what 
fastens  attention,  in  the  intercourse  of  life,  like  any 
passage  betraying  affection  between  two  parties? 
Perhaps  we  never  saw  them  before  and  never  shall 
meet  them  again.  But  we  see  them  exchange  a 
glance  or  betray  a'  deep  emotion,  and  we  are  no 
longer  strangers.  We  understand  them  and  take 
the  warmest  interest  in  the  development  of  the  ro 
mance.  All  mankind  love  a  lover.  The  earliest 
demonstrations  of  complacency  and  kindness  are 
nature's  most  winning  pictures.  It  is  the  dawn  of 
civility  and  grace  in  the  coarse  and  rustic.  The 
rude  village  boy  teases  the  girls  about  the  school- 
house  door  ;  —  but  to-day  he  comes  running  into 
the  entry  and  meets  one  fair  child  disposing  her 
satchel ;  he  holds  her  books  to  help  her,  and  in 
stantly  it  seems  to  him  as  if  she  removed  herself 
from  him  infinitely,  and  was  a  sacred  precinct. 
Among  the  throng  of  girls  he  runs  rudely  enough, 
but  one  alone  distances  him ;  and  these  two  little 
neighbors,  that  were  so  close  just  now.  have  learned 
to  respect  each  other's  personality.  Or  who  can 
avert  his  eyes  from  the  engaging,  half -artful,  half- 
artless  ways  of  school-girls  who  go  into  the  country 


LOVE.  165 

shops  to  buy  a  skein  of  silk  or  a  sheet  of  paper,  and 
talk  half  an  hour  about  nothing  with  the  broad- 
faced,  good-natured  shop-boy.  In  the  village  they 
are  on  a  perfect  equality,  which  love  delights  in, 
and  without  any  coquetry  the  happy,  affectionate 
nature  of  woman  flows  out  in  this  pretty  gossipc 
The  girls  may  have  little  beauty,  yet  plainly  do 
they  establish  between  them  and  the  good  boy  the 
most  agreeable,  confiding  relations ;  what  with  their ' 
fun  and  their  earnest,  about  Edgar  and  Jonas  and 
Almira.  and  who  was  invited  to  the  party,  and  who 
danced  at  the  dancing-school,  and  when  the  singing- 
school  would  begin,  and  other  nothings  concerning 
which  the  parties  cooed.  By  and  by  that  boy  wants 
a  wife,  and  very  truly  and  heartily  will  he  know 
where  to  find  a  sincere  and  sweet  mate,  without  any 
risk  such  as  Milton  deplores  as  incident  to  scholars 
and  great  men. 

I  have  been  told  that  in  some  public  discourses 
of  mine  my  reverence  for  the  intellect  has  made  me 
unjustly  cold  to  the  personal  relations.  But  now  I 
almost  shrink  at  the  remembrance  of  such  disparag 
ing  words.  For  persons  are  love's  world,  and  the 
coldest  philosopher  cannot  recount  the  debt  of  the 
young  soul  wandering  here  in  nature  to  the  power 
of  love,  without  being  tempted  to  unsay,  as  treason 
able  to  nature,  aught  derogatory  to  the  social  in 
stincts.  For  though  the  celestial  rauture  falling 


166  LOVE. 

out  of  heaven  seizes  only  upon  those  of  tender  age, 
and  although  a  beauty  overpowering  all  analysis  or 
comparison  and  putting  us  quite  beside  ourselves 
we  can  seldom  see  after  thirty  years,  yet  the  remem 
brance  of  these  visions  outlasts  all  other  remem 
brances,  and  is  a  wreath  of  flowers  on  the  oldest 
brows.  But  here  is  a  strange  fact ;  it  may  seem  to 
many  men,  in  revising  their  experience,  that  they 
liave  no  fairer  page  in  their  life's  book  than  the  de 
licious  memory  of  some  passages  wherein  affection 
contrived  to  give  a  witchcraft,  surpassing  the  deep 
attraction  of  its  own  truth,  to  a  parcel  of  accidental 
and  trivial  circumstances.  In  looking  backward 
they  may  find  that  several  things  which  were  not 
the  charm  have  more  reality  to  this  groping  memory 
than  the  charm  itself  which  embalmed  them.  But 
be  our  experience  in  particulars  what  it  may,  no  man 
ever  forgot  the  visitations  of  that  power  to  his  heart 
and  brain,  which  created  all  things  anew ;  which  was 
the  dawn  in  him  of  music,  poetry  and  art ;  which 
made  the  face  of  nature  radiant  with  purple  light, 
the  morning  and  the  night  varied  enchantments  ; 
when  a  single  tone  of  one  voice  could  make  the 
heart  bound,  and  the  most  trivial  circumstance  as 
sociated  with  one  form  is  put  in  the  amber  of  mem 
ory  ;  when  he  became  all  eye  when  one  was  present, 
and  all  memory  when  one  was  gone ;  when  the 
youth  becomes  a  watcher  of  windows  and  studious 


LOVE.  167 

of  a  glove,  a  veil,  a  ribbon,  or  the  wheels  of  a  car 
riage  ;  when  no  place  is  too  solitary  and  none  too 
silent  for  him  who  has  richer  company  and  sweeter 
conversation  in  his  new  thoughts  than  any  old 
friends,  though  best  and  purest,  can  give  him ;  for 
the  figures,  the  motions,  the  words  of  the  beloved 
object  are  not,  like  other  images,  written  in  water, 
but,  as  Plutarch  said,  "  enamelled  in  fire,"  and  make 
the  study  of  midnight :  — 

"  Thou  art  not  gone  being  gone,  where'er  thou  art, 
Thou  leav'st  in  liim  thy  watchful  eyes,  in  him  thy  loving 
heart." 

In  the  noon  and  the  afternoon  of  life  we  still  throb 
at  the  recollection  of  days  when  happiness  was  not 
happy  enough,  but  must  be  drugged  with  the  relish 
of  pain  and  fear ;  for  he  touched  the  secret  of  the 
matter  who  said  of  love,  — 

"  All  other  pleasures  are  not  worth  its  pains:  " 

and  when  the  day  was  not  long  enough,  but  the 
night  too  must  be  consumed  in  keen  recollections  ; 
when  the  head  boiled  all  night  on  the  pillow  with 
the  generous  deed  it  resolved  on  ;  when  the  moon 
light  was  a  pleasing  fever  and  the  stars  were  letters 
and  the  flowers  ciphers  and  the  air  was  coined  into 
song  ;  when  all  business  seemed  an  impertinence, 
and  all  the  men  and  women  running  to  and  fro  in 
the  streets,  mere  pictures. 


168  LOVE. 

The  passion  rebuilds  the  world  for  the  youth.  It 
makes  all  things  alive  and  significant.  Nature 
grows  conscious.  Every  bird  on  the  boughs  of  the 
tree  sings  now  to  his  heart  and  soul.  The  notes 
are  almost  articulate.  The  clouds  have  faces  as  he 
looks  on  them.  The  trees  of  the  forest,  the  waving 
grass  and  the  peeping  flowers  have  grown  intelli 
gent  ;  and  he  almost  fears  to  trust  them  with  the 
secret  which  they  seem  to  invite.  Yet  nature  soothes 
and  sympathizes.  In  the  green  solitude  he  finds  a 
dearer  home  than  with  men  :  — 

"  Fountain-heads  and  pathless  groves, 
Places  which  pale  passion  loves, 
Moonlight  walks,  when  all  the  fowls 
Are  safely  housed,  save  bats  and  owls, 
A  midnight  bell,  a  passing  groan,  — 
These  are  the  sounds  we  feed  upon." 

Behold  there  in  the  wood  the  fine  madman !  He 
is  a  palace  of  sweet  sounds  and  sights  ;  he  dilates ; 
he  is  twice  a  man  ;  he  walks  with  arms  akimbo  ; 
he  soliloquizes  ;  he  accosts  the  grass  and  the  trees ; 
he  feels  the  blood  of  the  violet,  the  clover  and  the 
lily  in  his  veins  ;  and  he  talks  with  the  brook  that 
wets  his  foot. 

The  heats  that  have  opened  his  perceptions  of 
natural  beauty  have  made  him  love  music  and  verse. 
It  is  a  fact  often  observed,  that  men  have  written 
good  verses  under  the  inspiration  of  passion,  wha 
cannot  write  well  under  any  other  circumstances. 


LOVE.  169 

The  like  force  has  the  passion  over  all  his  nature. 
It  expands  the  sentiment ;  it  makes  the  clown  gen 
tle  and  gives  the  coward  heart.  Into  the  most  pit 
iful  and  abject  it  will  infuse  a  heart  and  courage  to 
defy  the  world,  so  only  it  have  the  countenance  of 
the  beloved  object.  In  giving  him  to  another  it 
still  more  gives  him  to  himself.  He  is  a  new  man, 
with  new  perceptions,  new  and  keener  purposes, 
and  a  religious  solemnity  of  character  and  aims. 
He  does  not  longer  appertain  to  his  family  and  so 
ciety  ;  he  is  somewhat ;  he  is  a  person  ;  he  is  a 
soul. 

And  here  let  us  examine  a  little  nearer  the  na 
ture  of  that  influence  which  is  thus  potent  over  the 
human  youth.  Beauty,  whose  revelation  to  man 
we  now  celebrate,  welcome  as  the  sun  wherever  it 
pleases  to  shine,  which  pleases  everybody  with  it 
and  with  themselves,  seems  sufficient  to  itself.  The 
lover  cannot  paint  his  maiden  to  his  fancy  poor  and 
solitary.  Like  a  tree  in  flower,  so  much  soft,  bud 
ding,  informing  loveliness  is  society  for  itself  ;  and 
she  teaches  his  eye  why  Beauty  was  pictured  with 
Loves  and  Graces  attending  her  steps.  Her  exis 
tence  makes  the  world  rich.  Though  she  extrudes 
all  other  persons  from  his  attention  as  cheap  and 
unworthy,  she  indemnifies  him  by  carrying  out  her 
own  being  into  somewhat  impersonal,  large,  mun 
dane,  so  that  the  maiden  stands  to  him  for  a  repre- 


170  LOVE. 

sentative  of  all  select  things  and  virtues.  For  that 
reason  the  lover  never  sees  personal  resemblances 
in  his  mistress  to  her  kindred  or  to  others.  His 
friends  find  in  her  a  likeness  to  her  mother,  or  her 
sisters,  or  to  persons  not  of  her  blood.  The  lover 
sees  no  resemblance  except  to  summer  evenings 
and  diamond  mornings,  to  rainbows  and  the  song 
of  birds. 

The  ancients  called  beauty  the  flowering  of  vir 
tue.  Who  can  analyze  the  nameless  charm  which 
glances  from  one  and  another  face  and  form  ?  We 
are  touched  with  emotions  of  tenderness  and  com 
placency,  but  we  cannot  find  whereat  this  dainty 
emotion,  this  wandering  gleam,  points.  It  is  de 
stroyed  for  the  imagination  by  any  attempt  to  refer 
it  to  organization.  Nor  does  it  point  to  any  rela 
tions  of  friendship  or  love  known  and  described  in 
society,  but,  as  it  seems  to  me,  to  a  quite  other  and 
unattainable  sphere,  to  relations  of  transcendent  del 
icacy  and  sweetness,  to  what  roses  and  violets  hint 
and  foreshow.  We  cannot  approach  beauty.  Its 
nature  is  like  opaline  doves'-neck  lustres,  hovering 
and  evanescent.  Herein  it  resembles  the  most  ex 
cellent  things,  which  all  have  this  rainbow  charac 
ter,  defying  all  attempts  at  appropriation  and  use. 
What  else  did  Jean  Paul  Richter  signify,  when  he 
Baid  to  music,  "  Away !  away  I  thou  speakest  to  me 
of  things  which  in  all  my  endless  life  I  have  not 


LOVE.  171 

found  and  shall  not  find."  The  same  fluency  may 
be  observed  in  every  work  of  the  plastic  arts.  The 
statue  is  then  beautiful  when  it  begins  to  be  incom 
prehensible,  when  it  is  passing  out  of  criticism  and 
can  no  longer  be  defined  by  compass  and  measur 
ing-wand,  but  demands  an  active  imagination  to  go 
with  it  and  to  say  what  it  is  in  the  act  of  doing. 
The  god  or  hero  of  the  sculptor  is  always  repre 
sented  in  a  transition  from  that  which  is  represent- 
able  to  the  senses,  to  that  which  is  not.  Then  first 
it  ceases  to  be  a  stone.  The  same  remark  holds  of 
painting.  And  of  poetry  the  success  is  not  at 
tained  when  it  lulls  and  satisfies,  but  when  it  as 
tonishes  and  fires  us  with  new  endeavors  after  the 
unattainable.  Concerning  it  Landor  inquires 
"  whether  it  is  not  to  be  referred  to  some  purer 
state  of  sensation  and  existence." 

In  like  manner,  personal  beauty  is  then  first 
charming  and  itself  when  it  dissatisfies  us  with  any 
end ;  when  it  becomes  a  story  without  an  end ; 
when  it  suggests  gleams  and  visions  and  not  earthly 
satisfactions ;  when  it  makes  the  beholder  feel  his 
unworthiness  ;  when  he  cannot  feel  his  right  to  it, 
though  he  were  Caesar ;  he  cannot  feel  more  right 
to  it  than  to  the  firmament  and  the  splendors  of  a 
sunset. 

Hence  arose  the  saying,  "  If  I  love  you,  what  is 
that  to  you  ? "  We  say  so  because  we  feel  that 


172  LOVE. 

what  we  love  is  not  in  your  will,  but  above  it.  It 
is  not  you,  but  your  radiance.  It  is  that  which 
you  know  not  in  yourself  and  can  never  know. 

This  agrees  well  with  that  high  philosophy  of 
Beauty  which  the  ancient  writers  delighted  in ;  for 
they  said  that  the  soul  of  man,  embodied  here  on 
earth,  went  roaming  up  and  down  in  quest  of  that 
other  world  of  its  own  out  of  which  it  came  into 
this,  but  was  soon  stupefied  by  the  light  of  the  nak 
ural  sun,  and  unable  to  see  any  other  objects  than 
those  of  this  world,  which  are  but  shadows  of  real 
things.  Therefore  the  Deity  sends  the  glory  of 
youth  "before  the  soul,  that  it  may  avail  itself  of 
beautiful  bodies  as  aids  to  its  recollection  of  the 
celestial  good  and  fair  ;  and  the  man  beholding 
such  a  person  in  the  female  sex  runs  to  her  and 
finds  the  highest  joy  in  contemplating  the  form, 
movement  and  intelligence  of  this  person,  because 
it  suggests  to  him  the  presence  of  that  which  in 
deed  is  within  the  beauty,  and  the  cause  of  the 
beauty. 

If  however,  from  too  much  conversing  with  ma 
terial  objects,  the  soul  was  gross,  and  misplaced  its 
satisfaction  in  the  body,  it  reaped  nothing  but  sor 
row  ;  body  being  unable  to  fulfil  the  promise  which 
beauty  holds  out ,  but  if,  accepting  the  hint  of 
these  visions  and  suggestions  which  beauty  makes 
to  his  mind,  the  soul  passes  through  the  body  and 


LOVE.  173 

falls  to  admire  strokes  of  character,  and  the  lovers 
contemplate  one  another  in  their  discourses  and 
their  actions,  then  they  pass  to  the  true  palace  of 
beauty,  more  and  more  inflame  their  love  of  it,  and 
by  this  love  extinguishing  the  base  affection,  as  the 
sun  puts  out  fire  by  shining  on  the  hearth,  they  be 
come  pure  and  hallowed.  By  conversation  with 
that  which  is  in  itself  excellent,  magnanimous, 
lowly,  and  just,  the  lover  comes  to  a  warmer  love 
of  these  nobilities,  and  a  quicker  apprehension  of 
them.  Then  he  passes  from  loving  them  in  one  to 
loving  them  in  all,  and  so  is  the  one  beautiful  soul 
only  the  door  through  which  he  enters  to  the  soci 
ety  of  all  true  and  pure  souls.  In  the  particular 
society  of  his  mate  he  attains  a  clearer  sight  of  any 
spot,  any  taint  which  her  beauty  has  contracted 
from  this  world,  and  is  able  to  point  it  out,  and 
this  with  mutual  joy  that  they  are  now  able,  with 
out  offence,  to  indicate  blemishes  and  hindrances 
in  each  other,  and  give  to  each  all  help  and  com 
fort  in  curing  the  same.  And  beholding  in  many 
souls  the  traits  of  the  divine  beauty,  and  separating 
in  each  soul  that  which  is  divine  from  the  taint 
which  it  has  contracted  in  the  world,  the  lover  as 
cends  to  the  highest  beauty,  to  the  love  and  knowl 
edge  of  the  Divinity,  by  steps  on  this  ladder  of 
Created  souls. 

Somewhat  like  this  have  the  truly  wise  told  us  of 


174  LOVE. 

love  in  all  ages.  The  doctrine  is  not  old,  nor  is  it 
new.  If  Plato,  Plutarch  and  Apuleius  taught  it, 
so  have  Petrarch,  Angelo  and  Milton.  It  awaits  a 
truer  unfolding  in  opposition  and  rebuke  to  that 
subterranean  prudence  which  presides  at  marriages 
with  words  that  take  hold  of  the  upper  world,  whilst 
one  eye  is  prowling  in  the  cellar ;  so  that  its  gravest 
discourse  has  a  savor  of  hams  and  powdering-tubs. 
Worst,  when  this  sensualism  intrudes  into  the  ed= 
ucation  of  young  women,  and  withers  the  hope  and 
affection  of  human  nature  by  teaching  that  mar 
riage  signifies  nothing  but  a  housewife's  thrift,  and 
that  woman's  life  has  no  other  aim. 

But  this  dream  of  love,  though  beautiful,  is  only 
one  scene  in  our  play.  In  the  procession  of  the 
soul  from  within  outward,  it  enlarges  its  circles 
ever,  like  the  pebble  thrown  into  the  pond,  or  the 
light  proceeding  from  an  orb.  The  rays  of  the  soul 
alight  first  on  things  nearest,  on  every  utensil  and 
toy,  on  nurses  and  domestics,  on  the  house  and  yard 
and  passengers,  on  the  circle  of  household  acquaint 
ance,  on  politics  and  geography  and  history.  But 
things  are  ever  grouping  themselves  according  to 
higher  or  more  interior  laws.  Neighborhood,  size, 
numbers,  habits,  persons,  lose  by  degrees  their 
power  over  us.  Cause  and  effect,  real  affinities,  the 
longing  for  harmony  between  the  soul  and  the  cir 
cumstance,  the  progressive,  idealizing  instinct,  pre« 


LOVE.  175 

dominate  later,  and  the  step  backward  from  the 
higher  to  the  lower  relations  is  impossible.  Thus 
even  love,  which  is  the  deification  of  persons,  must 
become  more  impersonal  every  day.  Of  this  at  first 
it  gives  no  hint.  Little  think  the  youth  and 
maiden  who  are  glancing  at  each  other  across 
crowded  rooms  with  eyes  so  full  of  mutual  intel 
ligence,  of  the  precious  fruit  long  hereafter  to  pro 
ceed  from  this  new,  quite  external  stimulus.  Tho 
work  of  vegetation  begins  first  in  the  irritability  of 
the  bark  arid  leaf-buds.  From  exchanging  glances, 
they  advance  to  acts  of  courtesy,  of  gallantry,  then 
to  fiery  passion,  to  plighting  troth  and  marriage. 
Passion  beholds  its  object  as  a  perfect  unit.  The 
soul  is  wholly  embodied,  and  the  body  is  wholly  en 
souled  :  — 

"  Her  pure  and  eloquent  blood 
Spoke  in  her  cheeks,  and  so  distinctly  wrought, 
That  one  might  almost  say  her  body  thought." 

Romeo,  if  dead,  should  be  cut  up  into  little  stars  to 
make  the  heavens  fine.  Life,  with  this  pair,  has  no 
other  aim,  asks  no  more,  than  Juliet,  —  than  Ro 
meo.  Night,  day,  studies,  talents,  kingdoms,  relig 
ion,  are  all  contained  in  this  form  full  of  soul,  in 
this  soul  which  is  all  form.  The  lovers  delight  in 
endearments,  in  avowals  of  love,  in  comparisons  of 
their  regards.  When  alone,  they  solace  themselves 
with  the  remembered  image  of  the  other.  Does 


176  LOVE. 

that  other  see  the  same  star,  the  same  melting 
cloud,  read  the  same  book,  feel  the  same  emotion, 
that  now  delights  me  ?  They  try  and  weigh  their 
affection,  and  adding  up  costly  advantages,  friends, 
opportunities,  properties,  exult  in  discovering  that 
willingly,  joyfully,  they  would  give  all  as  a  ransom 
for  the  beautiful,  the  beloved  head,  not  one  hair  of 
which  shall  be  harmed.  But  the  lot  of  humanity 
is  on  these  children.  Danger,  sorrow  and  pain  ar 
rive  to  them  as  to  all.  Love  prays.  It  makes  cov 
enants  with  Eternal  Power  in  behalf  of  this  dear 
mate.  The  union  which  is  thus  effected  and  which 
adds  a  new  value  to  every  atom  in  nature  —  for  it 
transmutes  every  thread  throughout  the  whole  web 
of  relation  into  a  golden  ray,  and  bathes  the  soul  in 
a  new  and  sweeter  element  —  is  yet  a  temporary 
state.  Not  always  can  flowers,  pearls,  poetry,  pro 
testations,  nor  even  home  in  another  heart,  content 
the  awful  soul  that  dwells  in  clay.  It  arouses  it 
self  at  last  from  these  endearments,  as  toys,  and 
puts  on  the  harness  and  aspires  to  vast  and  univer 
sal  aims.  The  soul  which  is  in  the  soul  of  each, 
craving  a  perfect  beatitude,  detects  incongruities, 
defects  and  disproportion  in  the  behavior  of  the 
other.  Hence  arise  surprise,  expostulation  and 
pain.  Yet  that  which  drew  them  to  each  other 
was  signs  of  loveliness,  signs  of  virtue  ;  and  these 
virtues  are  there,  however  eclipsed.  They  appear 


LOVE.  177 

and  reappear  and  continue  to  attract ;  but  the  re 
gard  changes,  quits  the  sign  and  attaches  to  the 
substance.  This  repairs  the  wounded  affection. 
Meantime,  as  life  wears  on,  it  proves  a  game  of 
permutation  and  combination  of  all  possible  posi 
tions  of  the  parties,  to  employ  all  the  resources  of 
each  and  acquaint  each  with  the  strength  and  weak 
ness  of  the  other.  For  it  is  the  nature  and  end  of 
this  relation,  that  they  should  represent  the  human 
race  to  each  other.  All  that  is  in  the  world,  which 
is  or  ought  to  be  known,  is  cunningly  wrought  into 
the  texture  of  man,  of  woman  :  — 

"The  person  love  does  to  us  fit, 
Like  manna,  has  the  taste  of  all  in  it." 

The  world  rolls ;  the  circumstances  vary  every 
hour.  The  angels  that  inhabit  this  temple  of  the 
body  appear  at  the  windows,  and  the  gnomes  and 
vices  also.  By  all  the  virtues  they  are  united.  If 
there  be  virtue,  all  the  vices  are  known  as  such ; 
they  confess  and  flee.  Their  once  flaming  regard 
is  sobered  by  time  in  either  breast,  and  losing  in 
violence  what  it  gains  in  extent,  it  becomes  a  thor 
ough  good  understanding.  They  resign  each  other 
without  complaint  to  the  good  offices  which  man 
and  woman  are  severally  appointed  to  discharge  in 
time,  and  exchange  the  passion  which  once  could 
not  lose  sight  of  its  object,  for  a  cheerful  disengaged 
furtherance,  whether  present  or  absent,  of  each 

VOL  n.  12 


178  LOVE. 

other's  designs.  At  last  they  discover  that  all  which 
at  first  drew  them  together,  —  those  once  sacred 
features,  that  magical  play  of  charms,  —  was  decid 
uous,  had  a  prospective  end,  like  the  scaffolding  by 
which  the  house  was  built ;  and  the  purification  of 
the  intellect  and  the  heart  from  year  to  year  is  the 
real  marriage,  foreseen  and  prepared  from  the  first, 
and  wholly  above  their  consciousness.  Looking  at 
these  aims  with  which  two  persons,  a  man  and  a 
woman,  so  variously  and  correlatively  gifted,  are 
shut  up  in  one  house  to  spend  in  the  nuptial  society 
forty  or  fifty  years,  I  do  not  wonder  at  the  emphasis 
with  which  the  heart  prophesies  this  crisis  from 
early  infancy,  at  the  profuse  beauty  with  which 
the  instincts  deck  the  nuptial  bower,  and  nature  and 
intellect  and  art  emulate  each  other  in  the  gifts  and 
the  melody  they  bring  to  the  epithalamium. 

Thus  are  we  put  in  training  for  a  love  which 
knows  not  sex,  nor  person,  nor  partiality,  but  which 
seeks  virtue  and  wisdom  everywhere,  to  the  end  of 
increasing  virtue  and  wisdom.  We  are  by  nature 
observers,  and  thereby  learners.  That  is  our  per 
manent  state.  But  we  are  often  made  to  feel  that 
our  affections  are  but  tents  of  a  night.  Though 
slowly  and  with  pain,  the  objects  of  the  affections 
change,  as  the  objects  of  thought  do.  There  are 
moments  when  the  affections  rule  and  absorb  tho 
man  and  make  his  happiness  dependent  on  a  per 


LOVE.  179 

son  or  persons.  But  in  health  the  mind  is  presently 
seen  again,  —  its  overarching  vault,  bright  with 
galaxies  of  immutable  lights,  and  the  warm  loves 
and  fears  that  swept  over  us  as  clouds  must  lose 
their  finite  character  and  blend  with  God,  to  attain 
their  own  perfection.  But  we  need  not  fear  that 
we  can  lose  any  thing  by  the  progress  of  the  soul. 
The  soul  may  be  trusted  to  the  end.  That  which  is 
so  beautiful  and  attractive  as  these  relations,  must 
be  succeeded  and  supplanted  only  by  what  is  more 
beautiful,  and  so  on  for  ever. 


FRIENDSHIP. 


A  RUDDY  drop  of  manly  blood 

The  surging  sea  outweighs  ; 

The  world  uncertain  comes  and  goes. 

The  lover  rooted  stays. 

I  fancied  he  was  fled, 

And,  after  many  a  year, 

Glowed  unexhausted  kindliness 

Like  daily  sunrise  there. 

My  careful  heart  was  free  again,  — 

O  friend,  my  bosom  said, 

Through  thee  alone  the  sky  is  arched, 

Through  thee  the  rose  is  red, 

All  things  through  thee  take  nobler  form 

And  look  beyond  the  earth, 

The  mill-round  of  our  fate  appears 

A  sun-path  in  thy  worth. 

Me  too  thy  nobleness  has  taught 

To  master  my  despair  ; 

The  fountains  of  my  hidden  life 

Are  through  thy  friendship  fain 


VI. 

FRIENDSHIP. 


WE  have  a  great  deal  more  kindness  than  is  ever 
spoken.  Maugre  all  the  selfishness  that  chills  like 
east  winds  the  world,  the  whole  human  family  is 
bathed  with  an  element  of  love  like  a  fine  ether. 
How  many  persons  we  meet  in  houses,  whom  we 
scarcely  speak  to,  whom  yet  we  honor,  and  who 
honor  us  !  How  many  we  see  in  the  street,  or  sit 
with  in  church,  whom,  though  silently,  we  warmly 
rejoice  to  be  with !  Read  the  language  of  these 
wandering  eye-beams.  The  heart  knoweth. 

The  effect  of  the  indulgence  of  this  human  affec 
tion  is  a  certain  cordial  exhilaration.  In  poetry 
and  in  common  speech  the  emotions  of  benevolence 
and  complacency  which  are  felt  towards  others  are 
likened  to  the  material  effects  of  fire  ;  so  swift,  or 
much  more  swift,  more  active,  more  cheering,  are 
these  fine  inward  irradiations.  From  the  highest 
degree  of  passionate  love  to  the  lowest  degree  of 
good -will,  they  make  the  sweetness  of  life. 


184  FRIENDSHIP. 

Our  intellectual  and  active  powers  increase  with 
our  affection.  The  scholar  sits  down  to  write,  and 
all  his  years  of  meditation  do  not  furnish  him  with 
one  good  thought  or  happy  expression ;  but  it  is 
necessary  to  write  a  letter  to  a  friend,  —  and  forth 
with  troops  of  gentle  thoughts  invest  themselves,  on 
every  hand,  with  chosen  words.  See,  in  any  house 
where  virtue  and  self-respect  abide,  the  palpitation 
which  the  approach  of  a  stranger  causes.  A  com 
mended  stranger  is  expected  and  announced,  and 
an  uneasiness  betwixt  pleasure  and  pain  invades  all 
the  hearts  of  a  household.  His  arrival  almost  brings 
fear  to  the  good  hearts  that  would  welcome  him. 
The  house  is  dusted,  all  things  fly  into  their  places, 
the  old  coat  is  exchanged  for  the  new,  and  they 
must  get  up  a  dinner  if  they  can.  Of  a  commended 
stranger,  only  the  good  report  is  told  by  others, 
only  the  good  and  new  is  heard  by  us.  He  stands 
to  us  for  humanity.  He  is  what  we  wish.  Having 
imagined  and  invested  him,  we  ask  how  we  should 
stand  related  in  conversation  and  action  with  such  a 
man,  and  are  uneasy  with  fear.  The  same  idea  ex 
alts  conversation  with  him.  We  talk  better  than 
we  are  wont.  We  have  the  nimblest  fancy,  a  richer 
memory,  and  our  dumb  devil  has  taken  leave  for 
the  time.  For  long  hours  we  can  continue  a  series 
of  sincere,  graceful,  rich  communications,  drawn 
from  the  oldest,  secretest  experience,  so  that  they 


FRIENDSHIP.  185 

tvho  sit  by,  of  our  own  kinsfolk  and  acquaintance, 
shall  feel  a  lively  surprise  at  our  unusual  powers. 
But  as  soon  as  the  stranger  begins  to  intrude  his 
partialities,  his  definitions,  his  defects  into  the  con 
versation,  it  is  all  over.  He  has  heard  the  first,  the 
last  and  best  he  will  ever  hear  from  us.  He  is  no 
stranger  now.  Vulgarity,  ignorance,  misapprehen 
sion  are  old  acquaintances.  Now,  when  he  comes, 
he  may  get  the  order,  the  dress  and  the  dinner,  — 
but  the  throbbing  of  the  heart  and  the  communica 
tions  of  the  soul,  no  more. 

What  is  so  pleasant  as  these  jets  of  affection 
which  make  a  young  world  for  me  again  ?  What 
so  delicious  as  a  just  and  firm  encounter  of  two,  in 
a  thought,  in  a  feeling  ?  How  beautiful,  on  their 
approach  to  this  beating  heart,  the  steps  and  forms 
of  the  gifted  and  the  true !  The  moment  we  in 
dulge  our  affections,  the  earth  is  metamorphosed ; 
there  is  no  winter  and  no  night ;  all  tragedies,  all 
ennuis  vanish,  —  all  duties  even  ;  nothing  fills  the 
proceeding  eternity  but  the  forms  all  radiant  of  be 
loved  persons.  Let  the  soul  be  assured  that  some 
where  in  the  universe  it  should  rejoin  its  friend, 
and  it  would  be  content  and  cheerful  alone  for  a 
thousand  years. 

I  awoke  this  morning  with  devout  thanksgiving 
for  my  friends,  the  old  and  the  new.  Shall  I  not 
call  God  the  Beautiful,  who  daily  showeth  himself 


186  FRIENDSHIP. 

so  to  me  in  his  gifts?  I  chide  society,  I  embrace 
solitude,  and  yet  I  am  not  so  ungrateful  as  not  to 
see  the  wise,  the  lovely  and  the  noble-minded,  as 
from  time  to  time  they  pass  my  gate.  Who  hears 
me,  who  understands  me,  becomes  mine,  —  a  pos 
session  for  all  time.  Nor  is  Nature  so  poor  but  she 
gives  me  this  joy  several  times,  and  thus  we  weave 
social  threads  of  our  own,  a  new  web  of  relations  ; 
and,  as  many  thoughts  in  succession  substantiate 
themselves,  we  shall  by  and  by  stand  in  a  new  world 
of  our  own  creation,  and  no  longer  strangers  and 
pilgrims  in  a  traditionary  globe.  My  friends  have 
come  to  me  unsought.  The  great  God  gave  them 
to  me.  By  oldest  right,  by  the  divine  affinity  of 
virtue  with  itself,  I  find  them,  or  rather  not  I  but 
the  Deity  in  me  and  in  them  derides  and  cancels 
the  thick  walls  of  individual  character,  relation,  age, 
sex,  circumstance,  at  which  he  usually  connives,  and 
now  makes  many  one.  High  thanks  I  owe  you,  ex 
cellent  lovers,  who  carry  out  the  world  for  me  to 
new  and  noble  depths,  and  enlarge  the  meaning  of 
all  my  thoughts.  These  are  new  poetry  of  the  first 
Bard,  —  poetry  without  stop, — hymn,  ode  and  epic, 
poetry  still  flowing,  Apollo  and  the  Muses  chanting 
still.  Will  these  too  separate  themselves  from  me 
again,  or  some  of  them  ?  I  know  not,  but  I  fear 
it  not ;  for  my  relation  to  them  is  so  pure  that  we 
bold  by  simple  affinity,  and  the  Genius  of  my  life 


FRIENDSHIP.  187 

being  thus  social,  the  same  affinity  will  exert  its 
energy  on  whomsoever  is  as  noble  as  these  men 
and  women,  wherever  I  may  be. 

I  confess  to  an  extreme  tenderness  of  nature  on 
this  point.  It  is  almost  dangerous  to  me  to  "  crush 
the  sweet  poison  of  misused  wine  "  of  the  affec 
tions.  A  new  person  is  to  me  a  great  event  and 
hinders  me  from  sleep.  I  have  often  had  fine  fan 
cies  about  persons  which  have  given  me  delicious 
hours ;  but  the  joy  ends  in  the  day  ;  it  yields  no 
fruit.  Thought  is  not  born  of  it ;  my  action  is  very 
little  modified.  I  must  feel  pride  in  my  friend's 
accomplishments  as  if  they  were  mine,  and  a  prop 
erty  in  his  virtues.  I  feel  as  warmly  when  he  is 
praised,  as  the  lover  when  he  hears  applause  of  his 
engaged  maiden.  We  over-estimate  the  conscience 
of  our  friend.  His  goodness  seems  better  than  our 
goodness,  his  nature  finer,  his  temptations  less. 
Every  thing  that  is  his,  —  his  name,  his  form,  his 
dress,  books  and  instruments,  —  fancy  enhances. 
Our  own  thought  sounds  new  and  larger  from  his 
mouth. 

Yet  the  systole  and  diastole  of  the  heart  are  not 
without  their  analogy  in  the  ebb  and  flow  of  love. 
Friendship,  like  the  immortality  of  the  soul,  is  too 
good  to  be  believed.  The  lover,  beholding  his 
maiden,  half  knows  that  she  is  not  verily  that 
which  he  worships ;  and  in  the  golden  hour  of 


188  FRIENDSHIP. 

friendship  we  are  surprised  with  shades  of  suspi* 
cioii  and  unbelief.  We  doubt  that  we  bestow  on 
our  hero  the  virtues  in  which  he  shines,  and  after 
wards  worship  the  form  to  which  we  have  ascribed 
this  divine  inhabitation.  In  strictness,  the  soul  does 
not  respect  men  as  it  respects  itself.  In  strict  sci 
ence  all  persons  underlie  the  same  condition  of  an 
infinite  remoteness.  Shall  we  fear  to  cool  our  love 
by  mining  for  the  metaphysical  foundation  of  this 
Elysian  temple  ?  Shall  I  not  be  as  real  as  the 
things  I  see  ?  If  I  am,  I  shall  not  fear  to  know 
them  for  what  they  are.  Their  essence  is  not  less 
beautiful  than  their  appearance,  though  it  needs 
finer  organs  for  its  apprehension.  The  root  of  the 
plant  is  not  unsightly  to  science,  though  for  chap- 
lets  and  festoons  we  cut  the  stem  short.  And  I 
must  hazard  the  production  of  the  bald  fact  amidst 
these  pleasing  reveries,  though  it  should  prove  an 
Egyptian  skull  at  our  banquet.  A  man  who  stands 
united  with  his  thought  conceives  magnificently  of 
himself.  He  is  conscious  of  a  universal  success, 
even  though  bought  by  uniform  particular  failures. 
No  advantages,  no  powers,  no  gold  or  force,  can  be 
any  match  for  him.  I  cannot  choose  but  rely  on  my 
own  poverty  more  than  on  your  wealth.  I  cannot 
make  your  consciousness  tantamount  to  mine.  Only 
the  star  dazzles  ;  the  planet  has  a  faint,  moon-liko 
cay.  I  hear  what  you  say  of  the  admirable  parts 


FRIENDSHIP.  189 

and  tried  temper  of  the  party  you  praise,  but  I  see 
well  that,  for  all  his  purple  cloaks,  I  shall  not  like 
him,  unless  he  is  at  last  a  poor  Greek  like  me*  I 
cannot  deny  it,  O  friend,  that  the  vast  shadow  of 
the  Phenomenal  includes  thee  also  in  its  pied  and 
painted  immensity,  —  thee  also,  compared  with 
whom  all  else  is  shadow.  Thou  art  not  Being,  as 
Truth  is,  as  Justice  is,  —  thou  art  not  my  soul,  but 
a  picture  and  effigy  of  that.  Thou  hast  come  to 
me  lately,  and  already  thou  art  seizing  thy  hat  and 
cloak.  Is  it  not  that  the  soul  puts  forth  friends  as 
the  tree  puts  forth  leaves,  and  presently,  by  the 
germination  of  new  buds,  extrudes  the  old  leaf? 
The  law  of  nature  is  alternation  for  evermore. 
Each  electrical  state  superinduces  the  opposite. 
The  soul  environs  itself  with  friends  that  it  may  en 
ter  into  a  grander  self-acquaintance  or  solitude ; 
and  it  goes  alone  for  a  season  that  it  may  exalt  its 
conversation  or  society.  This  method  betrays  itself 
along  the  whole  history  of  our  personal  relations. 
The  instinct  of  affection  revives  the  hope  of  union 
with  our  mates,  and  the  returning  sense  of  insula 
tion  recalls  us  from  the  chase.  Thus  every  man 
passes  his  life  in  the  search  after  friendship,  and  if 
he  should  record  his  true  sentiment,  he  might  write 
a  letter  like  this  to  each  new  candidate  for  his 
love :  — 


190  FRIENDSHIP. 

DEAR  FRIEND, 

If  I  was  sure  of  thee,  sure  of  thy  capacity,  sure 
to  match  my  mood  with  thine,  I  should  never  think 
again  of  trifles  in  relation  to  thy  comings  and  go 
ings.  I  am  not  very  wise ;  my  moods  are  quite  at 
tainable,  and  I  respect  thy  genius  ;  it  is  to  me  as 
yet  unfathomed  ;  yet  dare  I  not  presume  in  thee  a 
perfect  intelligence  of  me,  and  so  thou  art  to  me  a 
delicious  torment.  Thine  ever,  or  never. 

Yet  these  uneasy  pleasures  and  fine  pains  are  for 
curiosity  and  not  for  life.  They  are  not  to  be  in 
dulged.  This  is  to  weave  cobweb,  and  not  cloth. 
Our  friendships  hurry  to  short  and  poor  conclu 
sions,  because  we  have  made  them  a  texture  of  wine 
and  dreams,  instead  of  the  tough  fibre  of  the  hu 
man  heart.  The  laws  of  friendship  are  austere  and 
eternal,  of  one  web  with  the  laws  of  nature  and  of 
morals.  But  we  have  aimed  at  a  swift  and  petty 
benefit,  to  suck  a  sudden  sweetness.  We  snatch  at 
the  slowest  fruit  in  the  whole  garden  of  God,  which 
many  summers  and  many  winters  must  ripen.  We 
seek  our  friend  not  sacredly,  but  with  an  adulterate 
passion  which  would  appropriate  him  to  ourselves^ 
In  vain.  We  are  armed  all  over  with  subtle  an 
tagonisms,  which,  as  soon  as  we  meet,  begin  to  play, 
and  translate  all  poetry  into  stale  prose.  Almost 
all  people  descend  to  meet.  All  association  must 


FRIENDSHIP.  191 

be  a  compromise,  and,  what  is  worst,  the  very 
flower  and  aroma  of  the  flower  of  each  of  the  beau 
tiful  natures  disappears  as  they  approach  each  other. 
What  a  perpetual  disappointment  is  actual  society, 
even  of  the  virtuous  and  gifted  !  After  interviews 
have  been  compassed  with  long  foresight  we  must 
be  tormented  presently  by  baffled  blows,  by  sudden, 
unseasonable  apathies,  by  epilepsies  of  wit  and  of 
animal  spirits,  in  the  heyday  of  friendship  and 
thought.  Our  faculties  do  not  play  us  true,  and 
both  parties  are  relieved  by  solitude. 

I  ought  to  be  equal  to  every  relation.  It  makes 
no  difference  how  many  friends  I  have  and  what 
content  I  can  find  in  conversing  with  each,  if  there 
be  one  to  whom  I  am  not  equal.  If  I  have  shrunk 
unequal  from  one  contest,  the  joy  I  find  in  all  the 
rest  becomes  mean  and  cowardly.  I  should  hate 
myself,  if  then  I  made  my  other  friends  my  asy 
lum  :  — 

"  The  valiant  warrior  f amoused  for  fight, 
After  a  hundred  victories,  once  foiled, 
Is  from  the  book  of  honor  razed  quite 
And  all  the  rest  forgot  for  which  he  toiled." 

Our  impatience  is  thus  sharply  rebuked.  Bash- 
fulness  and  apathy  are  a  tough  husk  in  wkich  a  del 
icate  organization  is  protected  from  premature 
ripening.  It  would  be  lost  if  it  knew  itself  before 
any  of  the  best  souls  were  yet  ripe  enough  to  know 


192  FRIENDSHIP. 

and  own  it.  Respect  the  naturlang samkeit  which 
hardens  the  ruby  in  a  million  years,  and  works  in 
duration  in  which  Alps  and  Andes  come  and  go  as 
rainbows.  The  good  spirit  of  our  life  has  no  heaven 
which  is  the  price  of  rashness.  Love,  which  is  the 
essence  of  God,  is  not  for  levity,  but  for  the  tota) 
worth  of  man.  Let  us  not  have  this  childish  lux 
ury  in  our  regards,  but  the  austerest  worth ;  let  us 
approach  our  friend  with  an  audacious  trust  in  the 
truth  of  his  heart,  in  the  breadth,  impossible  to  be 
overturned,  of  his  foundations. 

The  attractions  of  this  subject  are  not  to  be  re 
sisted,  and  I  leave,  for  the  time,  all  account  of  sub 
ordinate  social  benefit,  to  speak  of  that  select  and 
sacred  relation  which  is  a  kind  of  absolute,  and 
which  even  leaves  the  language  of  love  suspicious 
and  common,  so  much  is  this  purer,  and  nothing  is 
so  much  divine. 

I  do  not  wish  to  treat  friendships  daintily,  but 
with  roughest  courage.  When  they  are  real,  they 
are  not  glass  threads  or  frostwork,  but  the  solidest 
thing  we  know.  For  now,  after  so  many  ages  of  ex 
perience,  what  do  we  know  of  nature  or  of  our 
selves  ?  Not  one  step  has  man  taken  toward  the 
solution  of  the  problem  of  his  destiny.  In  one  con 
demnation  of  folly  stand  the  whole  universe  of  men. 
But  the  sweet  sincerity  of  joy  and  peace  which  I 
draw  from  this  alliance  with  my  brother's  soul  is 


FRIENDSHIP.  193 

the  nut  itself  whereof  all  nature  and  all  thought  is 
but  the  husk  and  shell.  Happy  is  the  house  that 
shelters  a  friend !  It  might  well  be  built,  like  a 
festal  bower  or  arch,  to  entertain  him  a  single  day. 
Happier,  if  he  know  the  solemnity  of  that  relation 
and  honor  its  law !  He  who  offers  himself  a  candi 
date  for  that  covenant  comes  up,  like  an  Olympian, 
to  the  great  games  where  the  first-born  of  the  world 
are  the  competitors.  He  proposes  himself  for  con 
tests  where  Time,  Want,  Danger,  are  in  the  lists, 
and  he  alone  is  victor  who  has  truth  enough  in  his 
constitution  to  preserve  the  delicacy  of  his  beauty 
from  the  wear  and  tear  of  all  these.  The  gifts 
of  fortune  may  be  present  or  absent,  but  all 
the  speed  in  that  contest  depends  on  intrinsic 
nobleness  and  the  contempt  of  trifles.  There  are 
two  elements  that  go  to  the  composition  of  friend 
ship,  each  so  sovereign  that  I  can  detect  no  superi 
ority  in  either,  no  reason  why  either  should  be  first 
named.  One  is  truth.  A  friend  is  a  person  with 
whom  I  may  be  sincere.  Before  him  I  may  think 
aloud.  I  am  arrived  at  last  in  the  presence  of  a 
man  so  real  and  equal  that  I  may  drop  even  those 
undermost  garments  of  dissimulation,  courtesy,  and 
second  thought,  which  men  never  put  off,  and  may 
deal  with  him  with  the  simplicity  and  wholeness 
with  which  one  chemical  atom  meets  another.  Sin 
cerity  is  the  luxury  allowed,  like  diadems  and  au- 

VOL.    II.  13 


194  FRIENDSHIP. 

thority,  only  to  the  highest  rank  ;  that  being  per 
mitted  to  speak  truth,  as  having  none  above  it  to 
court  or  conform  unto.  Every  man  alone  is  sincere. 
At  the  entrance  of  a  second  person,  hypocrisy  be 
gins.  We  parry  and  fend  the  approach  of  our  fel 
low-man  by  compliments,  by  gossip,  by  amusements, 
by  affairs.  We  cover  up  our  thought  from  him 
under  a  hundred  folds.  I  knew  a  man  who  undei 
a  certain  religious  frenzy  cast  off  this  drapery,  and 
omitting  all  compliment  and  commonplace,  spoke 
to  the  conscience  of  every  person  he  encountered, 
and  that  with  great  insight  and  beauty.  At  first 
he  was  resisted,  and  all  men  agreed  he  was  mad. 
But  persisting  —  as  indeed  he  could  not  help  doing 
—  for  some  time  in  this  course,  he  attained  to  the 
advantage  of  bringing  every  man  of  his  acquain 
tance  into  true  relations  with  him.  No  man  would 
think  of  speaking  falsely  with  him,  or  of  putting 
him  off  with  any  chat  of  markets  or  reading-rooms. 
But  every  man  was  constrained  by  so  much  sincer 
ity  to  the  like  plaindealing,  and  what  love  of  nature, 
what  poetry,  what  symbol  of  truth  he  had,  he  did 
certainly  show  him.  But  to  most  of  us  society 
shows  not  its  face  and  eye,  but  its  side  and  its  back. 
To  stand  in  true  relations  with  men  in  a  false  age 
is  worth  a  fit  of  insanity,  is  it  not  ?  We  can  seldom 
go  erect.  Almost  every  man  we  meet  requires 
some  civility,  —  requires  to  be  humored  ;  he  has 


FRIENDSHIP.  195 

Rome  fame,  some  talent,  some  whim  of  religion  or 
philanthropy  in  his  head  that  is  not  to  be  questioned, 
and  which  spoils  all  conversation  with  him.  But  a 
friend  is  a  sane  man  who  exercises  not  my  ingenuity, 
but  me.  My  friend  gives  me  entertainment  with 
out  requiring  any  stipulation  on  my  part.  A  friend 
therefore  is  a  sort  of  paradox  in  nature.  I  who 
alone  am,  I  who  see  nothing  in  nature  whose  exist 
ence  I  can  affirm  with  equal  evidence  to  my  own, 
behold  now  the  semblance  of  my  being,  in  all  its 
height,  variety  and  curiosity,  reiterated  in  a  foreign 
form  ;  so  that  a  friend  may  well  be  reckoned  the 
masterpiece  of  nature. 

The  other  element  of  friendship  is  tenderness. 
We  are  holden  to  men  by  every  sort  of  tie,  by 
blood,  by  pride,  by  fear,  by  hope,  by  lucre,  by  lust, 
by  hate,  by  admiration,  by  every  circumstance  and 
badge  and  trifle,  —  but  we  can  scarce  believe  that 
so  much  character  can  subsist  in  another  as  to 
draw  us  by  love.  Can  another  be  so  blessed  and 
we  so  pure  that  we  can  offer  him  tenderness  ? 
When  a  man  becomes  dear  to  me  I  have  touched 
the  goal  of  fortune.  I  find  very  little  written  di 
rectly  to  the  heart  of  this  matter  in  books.  And 
yet  I  have  one  text  which  I  cannot  choose  but  re 
member.  My  author  says,  —  "I  offer  myself 
faintly  and  bluntly  to  those  whose  I  effectually  am, 
ttnd  tender  myself  least  to  him  to  whom  I  am  the 


196  FRIENDSHIP. 

most  devoted."  I  wish  that  friendship  should  have 
feet,  as  well  as  eyes  and  eloquence.  It  must  plant 
itself  on  the  ground,  before  it  vaults  over  the 
moon.  I  wish  it  to  be  a  little  of  a  citizen,  before 
it  is  quite  a  cherub.  We  chide  the  citizen  because 
he  makes  love  a  commodity.  It  is  an  exchange  of 
gifts,  of  useful  loans  ;  it  is  good  neighborhood ;  it 
watches  with  the  sick ;  it  holds  the  pall  at  the  fu 
neral  ;  and  quite  loses  sight  of  the  delicacies  and 
nobility  of  the  relation.  But  though  we  cannot 
find  the  god  under  this  disguise  of  a  sutler,  yet  on 
the  other  hand  we  cannot  forgive  the  poet  if  he 
spins  his  thread  too  fine  and  doss  not  substantiate 
his  romance  by  the  municipal  virtues  of  justice, 
punctuality,  fidelity  and  pity.  I  hate  the  prostitu 
tion  of  the  name  of  friendship  to  signify  modish 
and  worldly  alliances.  I  much  prefer  the  company 
of  ploughboys  and  tin-peddlers  to  the  silken  and 
perfumed  amity  which  celebrates  its  days  of  en 
counter  by  a  frivolous  display,  by  rides  in  a  curri 
cle  and  dinners  at  the  best  taverns.  The  end  of 
friendship  is  a  commerce  the  most  strict  and 
homely  that  can  be  joined  ;  more  strict  than  any  of 
which  we  have  experience.  It  is  for  aid  and  com 
fort  through  all  the  relations  and  passages  of  life 
and  death.  It  is  fit  for  serene  days  and  graceful 
gifts  and  country  rambles,  but  also  for  rough 
roads  and  hard  fare,  shipwreck,  poverty  and  perse. 


FRIENDSHIP.  197 

cution.  It  keeps  company  with  the  sallies  of  the 
wit  and  the  trances  of  religion.  We  are  to  dignify 
fco  each  other  the  daily  needs  and  offices  of  man's 
life,  and  embellish  it  by  courage,  wisdom  and  unity. 
It  should  never  fall  into  something  usual  and  set 
tled,  but  should  be  alert  and  inventive  and  add 
rhyme  and  reason  to  what  was  drudgery. 

Friendship  may  be  said  to  require  natures  so 
rare  and  costly,  each  so  well  tempered  and  so  hap 
pily  adapted,  and  withal  so  circumstanced  (for 
even  in  that  particular,  a  poet  says,  love  demands 
that  the  parties  be  altogether  paired),  that  its  sat 
isfaction  can  very  seldom  be  assured.  It  cannot 
subsist  in  its  perfection,  say  some  of  those  who  are 
learned  in  this  warm  lore  of  the  heart,  betwixt 
more  than  two.  I  am  not  quite  so  strict  in  my 
terms,  perhaps  because  I  have  never  known  so  high 
a  fellowship  as  others.  I  please  my  imagination 
more  with  a  circle  of  godlike  men  and  women  vari 
ously  related  to  each  other  and  between  whom  sub 
sists  a  lofty  intelligence.  But  I  find  this  law  of 
one  to  one  peremptory  for  conversation,  which  is 
the  practice  and  consummation  of  friendship.  Do 
not  mix  waters  too  much.  The  best  mix  as  ill  as 
good  and  bad.  You  shall  have  very  useful  and 
cheering  discourse  at  several  times  with  two  several 
men,  but  let  all  three  of  you  come  together  and  you 
shall  not  have  one  new  and  hearty  word.  Two 


198  FRIENDSHIP. 

may  talk  and  one  may  hear,  but  three  cannot  take 
part  in  a  conversation  of  the  most  sincere  and 
searching  sort.  In  good  company  there  is  never 
such  discourse  between  two,  across  the  table,  as 
takes  place  when  you  leave  them  alone.  In  good 
company  the  individuals  merge  their  egotism  into 
a  social  soul  exactly  co-extensive  with  the  several 
consciousnesses  there  present.  No  partialities  of 
friend  to  friend,  no  fondnesses  of  brother  to  sis 
ter,  of  wife  to  husband,  are  there  pertinent,  but 
quite  otherwise.  Only  he  may  then  speak  who  can 
sail  on  the  common  thought  of  the  party,  and  not 
poorly  limited  to  his  own.  Now  this  convention, 
which  good  sense  demands,  destroys  the  high  free 
dom  of  great  conversation,  which  requires  an  ab 
solute  running  of  two  souls  into  one. 

No  two  men  but  being  left  alone  with  each  other 
enter  into  simpler  relations.  Yet  it  is  affinity  that 
determines  which  two  shall  converse.  Unrelated 
men  give  little  joy  to  each  other,  will  never  suspect 
the  latent  powers  of  each.  We  talk  sometimes  of 
a  great  talent  for  conversation,  as  if  it  were  a  per 
manent  property  in  some  individuals.  Conversa 
tion  is  an  evanescent  relation,  —  no  more.  A  man 
is  reputed  to  have  thought  and  eloquence ;  he  can 
not,  for  all  that,  say  a  word  to  his  cousin  or  his  tin- 
cle.  They  accuse  his  silence  with  as  much  reason 
as  they  would  blame  the  insignificance  of  a  dial  in 


FRIENDSHIP.  199 

the  shade.  In  the  sun  it  will  mark  the  hour. 
Among  those  who  enjoy  his  thought  he  will  regain 
his  tongue. 

Friendship  requires  that  rare  mean  betwixt  like 
ness  and  unlikeness  that  piques  each  with  the  pres 
ence  of  power  and  of  consent  in  the  other  party  <> 
Let  me  be  alone  to  the  end  of  the  world,  rather 
than  that  my  friend  should  overstep,  by  a  word  or  a 
look,  his  real  sympathy.  I  am  equally  balked  by 
antagonism  and  by  compliance.  Let  him  not  cease 
an  instant  to  be  himself.  The  only  joy  I  have  in 
his  being  mine,  is  that  the  not  mine,  is  mine.  I 
hate,  where  I  looked  for  a  manly  furtherance  or  at 
least  a  manly  resistance,  to  find  a  mush  of  conces 
sion.  Better  be  a  nettle  in  the  side  of  your  friend 
than  his  echo.  The  condition  which  high  friend 
ship  demands  is  ability  to  do  without  it.  That 
high  office  requires  great  and  sublime  parts. 
There  must  be  very  two,  before  there  can  be  very 
one.  Let  it  be  an  alliance  of  two  large,  formidable 
natures,  mutually  beheld,  mutually  feared,  before 
yet  they  recognize  the  deep  identity  which,  be 
neath  these  disparities,  unites  them. 

He  only  is  fit  for  this  society  who  is  magnani 
mous  ;  who  is  sure  that  greatness  and  goodness 
are  always  economy  ;  who  is  not  swift  to  intermed 
dle  with  his  fortunes.  Le4^  him  not  intermeddle 
with  this.  Leave  to  the  diamond  its  ages  to  grow, 


200  FRIENDSHIP. 

nor  expect  to  accelerate  the  births  of  the  eternal 
Friendship  demands  a  religious  treatment.  We 
talk  of  choosing  our  friends,  but  friends  are  self- 
elected.  Eeverence  is  a  great  part  of  it.  Treat 
your  friend  as  a  spectacle.  Of  course  he  has  merits 
that  are  not  yours,  and  that  you  cannot  honor  if 
you  must  needs  hold  him  close  to  your  person. 
Stand  aside ;  give  those  merits  room  ;  let  them 
mount  and  expand.  Are  you  the  friend  of  your 
friend's  buttons,  or  of  his  thought?  To  a  great 
heart  he  will  still  be  a  stranger  in  a  thousand  par 
ticulars,  that  he  may  come  near  in  the  holiest 
ground.  Leave  it  to  girls  and  boys  to  regard  a 
friend  as  property,  and  to  suck  a  short  and  all-con 
founding  pleasure,  instead  of  the  noblest  benefit. 

Let  us  buy  our  entrance  to  this  guild  by  a  long 
probation.  Why  should  we  desecrate  noble  and 
beautiful  siouls  by  intruding  on  them?  Why  insist 
on  rash  personal  relations  with  jour  friend  ?  Why 
go  to  his  house,  or  know  his  mother  and  brother 
and  sisters  ?  Why  be  visited  by  him  at  your  own? 
Are  these  things  material  to  our  covenant?  Leave 
this  touching  and  clawing.  Let  him  be  to  me  a 
spirit.  A  message,  a  thought,  a  sincerity,  a  glance 
from  him,  I  want,  but  not  news,  nor  pottage.  I  can 
get  politics  and  chat  and  neighborly  conveniences 
from  cheaper  companions.  Should  not  the  society 
of  my  friend  be  to  me  poetic,  pure,  universal  and 


FRIENDSHIP.  201 

great  as  nature  itself  ?  Ought  I  to  feel  that  our  tie 
is  profane  in  comparison  with  yonder  bar  of  cloud 
that  sleeps  on  the  horizon,  or  that  clump  of  waving 
grass  that  divides  the  brook?  Let  us  not  vilify, 
but  raise  it  to  that  standard.  That  great  defying 
eye,  that  scornful  beauty  of  his  mien  and  action, 
do  not  pique  yourself  on  reducing,  but  rather  for- 
tify  and  enhance.  Worship  his  superiorities  ;  wish 
him  not  less  by  a  thought,  but  hoard  and  tell  them 
all.  Guard  him  as  thy  counterpart.  Let  him  be 
to  thee  for  ever  a  sort  of  beautiful  enemy,  untama 
ble,  devoutly  revered,  and  not  a  trivial  conveniency 
to  be  soon  outgrown  and  cast  aside.  The  hues  of 
the  opal,  the  light  of  the  diamond,  are  not  to  be 
seen  if  the  eye  is  too  near.  To  my  friend  I  write  a 
letter  and  from  him  I  receive  a  letter.  That  seems 
to  you  a  little.  It  suffices  me.  It  is  a  spiritual 
gift,  worthy  of  him  to  give  and  of  me  to  receive. 
It  profanes  nobody.  In  these  warm  lines  the  heart 
will  trust  itself,  as  it  will  not  to  the  tongue,  and 
pour  out  the  prophecy  of  a  godlier  existence  than 
all  the  annals  of  heroism  have  yet  made  good. 

Respect  so  far  the  holy  laws  of  this  fellowship  as 
not  to  prejudice  its  perfect  flower  by  your  impa 
tience  for  its  opening.  We  must  be  our  own  be 
fore  we  can  be  another's.  There  is  at  least  this 
satisfaction  in  crime,  according  to  the  Latin  prov 
erb  ;  —  you  can  speak  to  your  accomplice  on  even 


202  FRIENDSHIP. 

terms.  Crimen  quos  inquinat,  cequat.  To  those 
whom  we  admire  and  love,  at  first  we  cannot.  Yet 
the  least  defect  of  self-possession  vitiates,  in  my 
judgment,  the  entire  relation.  There  can  never  be 
deep  peace  between  two  spirits,  never  mutual  re 
spect,  until  in  their  dialogue  each  stands  for  the 
whole  world. 

What  is  so  great  as  friendship,  let  us  carry  with 
what  grandeur  of  spirit  we  can.  Let  us  be  silent, — 
so  we  may  hear  the  whisper  of  the  gods.  Let  us 
not  interfere.  Who  set  you  to  cast  about  what  you 
should  say  to  the  select  souls,  or  how  to  say  any 
thing  to  such  ?  No  matter  how  ingenious,  no  mat 
ter  how  graceful  and  bland.  There  are  innumera 
ble  degrees  of  folly  and  wisdom,  and  for  you  to  say 
aught  is  to  be  frivolous.  Wait,  and  thy  heart  shall 
speak.  Wait  until  the  necessary  and  everlasting 
overpowers  you,  until  day  and  night  avail  them 
selves  of  your  lips.  The  only  reward  of  virtue  is 
virtue ;  the  only  way  to  have  a  friend  is  to  be  one. 
You  shall  not  come  nearer  a  man  by  getting  into 
his  house.  If  unlike,  his  soul  only  flees  the  faster 
from  you,  and  you  shall  never  catch  a  true  glance 
of  his  eye.  We  see  the  noble  afar  off  and  they  re 
pel  us  ;  why  should  we  intrude  ?  Late,  —  very 
late,  —  we  perceive  that  110  arrangements,  no  intro 
ductions,  no  consuetudes  or  habits  of  society  would 
be  of  any  avail  to  establish  us  in  such  relations 


FRIENDSHIP.  203 

with  them  as  we  desire,  —  but  solely  the  uprise  of 
nature  in  us  to  the  same  degree  it  is  in  them ;  then 
shall  we  meet  as  water  with  water;  and  if  we 
should  not  meet  them  then,  we  shall  not  want  them, 
for  we  are  already  they.  In  the  last  analysis,  love 
is  only  the  reflection  of  a  man's  own  worthiness 
from  other  men.  Men  have  sometimes  exchanged 
names  with  their  friends,  as  if  they  would  signify 
that  in  their  friend  each  loved  his  own  soul. 

The  higher  the  style  we  demand  of  friendship,  of 
course  the  less  easy  to  establish  it  with  flesh  and 
blood.  We  walk  alone  in  the  world.  Friends  such 
as  we  desire  are  dreams  and  fables.  But  a  sublime 
hope  cheers  ever  the  faithful  heart,  that  elsewhere, 
in  other  regions  of  the  universal  power,  souls  are 
now  acting,  enduring  and  daring,  which  can  love  us 
and  which  we  can  love.  We  may  congratulate  our 
selves  that  the  period  of  nonage,  of  follies,  of  blun 
ders  and  of  shame,  is  passed  in  solitude,  and  when 
we  are  finished  men  we  shall  grasp  heroic  hands  in 
heroic  hands.  Only  be  admonished  by  what  you 
already  see,  not  to  strike  leagues  of  friendship  with 
cheap  persons,  where  no  friendship  can  be.  Our 
\mpatience  betrays  us  into  rash  and  foolish  alliances 
which  no  god  attends.  By  persisting  in  your  path, 
though  you  forfeit  the  little  you  gain  the  great. 
You  demonstrate  yourself,  so  as  to  put  yourself  out 
of  the  reach  of  false  relations,  and  you  draw  to  you 


204  FRIENDSHIP. 

the  first-born  of  the  world,  —  those  rare  pilgrims 
whereof  only  one  or  two  wander  in  nature  at  once, 
and  before  whom  the  vulgar  great  show  as  spectres 
and  shadows  merely. 

It  is  foolish  to  be  afraid  of  making  our  ties  too 
spiritual,  as  if  so  we  could  lose  any  genuine  Iove0 
Whatever  correction  of  our  popular  views  we  make 
from  insight,  nature  will  be  sure  to  bear  us  out  in, 
and  though  it  seem  to  rob  us  of  some  joy,  will  re 
pay  us  with  a  greater.  Let  us  feel  if  we  will  the 
absolute  insulation  of  man.  We  are  sure  that  we 
have  all  in  us.  We  go  to  Europe,  or  we  pursue 
persons,  or  we  read  books,  in  the  instinctive  faith 
that  these  -vill  call  it  out  and  reveal  us  to  ourselves. 
Beggars  all.  The  persons  are  such  as  we ;  the  Eu 
rope,  an  old  faded  garment  of  dead  persons  ;  the 
books,  their  gho«+H-  Let  us  drop  this  idolatry.  Let 
us  give  over  this  mendicancy.  Let  us  even  bid  our 
dearest  friends  farewell,  and  defy  them,  saying 
4  Who  are  you  ?  Unhand  me  :  I  will  be  dependent 
no  more.'  Ah  !  seest  thou  not,  O  brother,  that  thus 
we  part  only  to  meet  again  on  a  higher  platform, 
and  only  be  more  each  other's  because  we  are  more 
our  own  ?  A  friend  is  Janus  -  faced  ;  he  looks  to 
the  past  and  the  future.  He  is  the  child  of  all  my 
foregoing  hours,  the  prophet  of  those  to  come,  and 
the  harbinger  of  a  greater  friend. 

I  do  then  with  my  friends  as  I  do  with  my  books. 


FRIENDSHIP.  205 

I  would  have  them  where  I  can  find  them,  but  I 
seldom  use  them.  We  must  have  society  on  our 
own  terms,  and  admit  or  exclude  it  on  the  slightest 
cause.  I  cannot  afford  to  speak  much  with  my 
friend.  If  he  is  great  he  makes  me  so  great  that 
I  cannot  descend  to  converse.  In  the  great  days, 
presentiments  hover  before  me  in  the  firmament. 
I  ought  then  to  dedicate  myself  to  them.  I  go  in 
that  I  may  seize  them,  I  go  out  that  I  may  seize 
them.  I  fear  only  that  I  may  lose  them  receding 
into  the  sky  in  which  now  they  are  only  a  patch  of 
brighter  light.  Then,  though  I  prize  my  friends, 
I  cannot  afford  to  talk  with  them  and  study  their 
visions,  lest  I  lose  my  own.  It  would  indeed  give 
me  a  certain  household  joy  to  quit  this  lofty  seek 
ing,  this  spiritual  astronomy  or  search  of  stars,  and 
come  down  to  warm  sympathies  with  you ;  but  then 
I  know  well  I  shall  mourn  always  the  vanishing  of 
my  mighty  gods.  It  is  true,  next  week  I  shall 
have  languid  moods,  when  I  can  well  afford  to  oc 
cupy  myself  with  foreign  objects ;  then  I  shall  re 
gret  the  lost  literature  of  your  mind,  and  wish  you 
were  by  my  side  again.  But  if  you  come,  perhaps 
you  will  fill  my  mind  only  with  new  visions ;  not 
with  yourself  but  with  your  lustres,  and  I  shall  not 
be  able  any  more  than  now  to  converse  with  you. 
So  I  will  owe  to  my  friends  this  evanescent  inter 
course.  I  will  receive  from  them  not  what  they 


206  FRIENDSHIP. 

have  but  what  they  are.  They  shall  give  me  that 
which  properly  they  cannot  give,  but  which  ema* 
nates  from  them.  But  they  shall  not  hold  me  by 
any  relations  less  subtile  and  pure.  We  will  meet 
as  though  we  met  not,  and  part  as  though  we  parted 
not. 

It  has  seemed  to  me  lately  more  possible  than  1 
knew,  to  carry  a  friendship  greatly,  on  one  side,  with- 
out  due  correspondence  on  the  other.  Why  should 
I  cumber  myself  with  regrets  that  the  receiver  is 
not  capacious  ?  It  never  troubles  the  sun  that  some 
of  his  rays  fall  wide  and  vain  into  ungrateful  space, 
and  only  a  small  part  on  the  reflecting  planet.  Let 
your  greatness  educate  the  crude  and  cold  compan 
ion.  If  he  is  unequal  he  will  presently  pass  away ; 
but  thou  art  enlarged  by  thy  own  shining,  and  no 
longer  a  mate  for  frogs  and  worms,  dost  soar  and 
burn  with  the  gods  of  the  empyrean.  It  is  thought 
a  disgrace  to  love  unrequited.  But  the  great  will 
see  that  true  love  cannot  be  unrequited.  True  love 
transcends  the  unworthy  object  and  dwells  and 
broods  on  the  eternal,  and  when  the  poor  interposed 
mask  crumbles,  it  is  not  sad,  but  feels  rid  of  so 
much  earth  and  feels  its  independency  the  surer. 
Yet  these  things  may  hardly  be  said  without  a  sort 
of  treachery  to  the  relation.  The  essence  of  friend- 
Bhip  is  entireuess,  a  total  magnanimity  and  trust 
It  must  not  surmise  or  provide  for  infirmity.  It 
treats  its  object  as  a  god,  that  it  may  deify  both. 


PRUDENCE. 


THEME  no  poet  gladly  sung, 
Fair  to  old  and  foul  to  young ; 
Scorn  not  thou  the  love  of  parts, 
And  the  articles  of  arts. 
Grandeur  of  the  perfect  sphere 
Thanks  the  atoms  that  cohere. 


VII. 
PRUDENCE. 


WHAT  right  have  I  to  write  on  Prudence,  where 
of  I  have  little,  and  that  of  the  negative  sort  ?  My 
prudence  consists  in  avoiding  and  going  without, 
not  in  the  inventing  of  means  and  methods,  not  in 
adroit  steering,  not  in  gentle  repairing.  I  have  no 
skill  to  make  money  spend  well,  no  genius  in  my 
economy,  and  whoever  sees  my  garden  discovers 
that  I  must  have  some  other  garden.  Yet  I  love 
facts,  and  hate  lubricity  and  people  without  percep 
tion.  Then  I  have  the  same  title  to  write  on  pru 
dence  that  I  have  to  write  on  poetry  or  holiness. 
We  write  from  aspiration  and  antagonism,  as  well 
as  from  experience.  We  paint  those  qualities  which 
we  dt)  not  possess.  The  poet  admires  the  man  of 
energy  and  tactics  ;  the  merchant  breeds  his  son  for 
the  church  or  the  bar ;  and  where  a  man  is  not  vain 
and  egotistic  you  shall  find  what  he  has  not  by  his 
praise.  Moreover  it  would  be  hardly  honest  in  me 
not  to  balance  these  fine  lyric  words  of  Love  and 

VOL.  ii.  14 


210  PRUDENCE. 

Friendship  with  words  of  coarser  sound,  and  whilst 
my  debt  to  my  senses  is  real  and  constant,  not  to 
own  it  in  passing. 

Prudence  is  the  virtue  of  the  senses.  It  is  the 
science  of  appearances.  It  is  the  outmost  action  of 
the  inward  life.  It  is  God  taking  thought  for  oxen. 
It  moves  matter  after  the  laws  of  matter.  It  is 
content  to  seek  health  of  body  by  complying  with 
physical  conditions,  and  health  of  mind  by  the  laws 
of  the  intellect. 

The  world  of  the  senses  is  a  world  of  shows ;  it 
does  not  exist  for  itself,  but  has  a  symbolic  char 
acter  ;  and  a  true  prudence  or  law  of  shows  recog 
nizes  the  co-presence  of  other  laws  and  knows  that 
its  own  office  is  subaltern ;  knows  that  it  is  surface 
and  not  centre  where  it  works.  Prudence  is  false 
when  detached.  It  is  legitimate  when  it  is  the  Nat 
ural  History  of  the  soul  incarnate,  when  it  unfolds 
the  beauty  of  laws  within  the  narrow  scope  of  the 
senses. 

There  are  all  degrees  of  proficiency  in  knowledge 
of  the  world.  It  is  sufficient  to  our  present  purpose 
to  indicate  three.  One  class  live  to  the  utility  of 
the  symbol,  esteeming  health  and  wealth  a  final 
good.  Another  class  live  above  this  mark  to  the 
beauty  of  the  symbol,  as  the  poet  and  artist  and 
the  naturalist  and  man  of  science.  A  third  class 
live  above  the  beauty  of  the  symbol  to  the  beauty 


PRUDENCE.  211 

of  the  thing  signified ;  these  are  wise  men.  The 
first  class  have  common  sense  ;  the  second,  taste  ; 
and  the  third,  spiritual  perception.  Once  in  a  long 
time,  a  man  traverses  the  whole  scale,  and  sees  and 
enjoys  the  symbol  solidly,  then  also  has  a  clear  eye 
for  its  beauty,  and  lastly,  whilst  he  pitches  his  tent 
on  this  sacred  volcanic  isle  of  nature,  does  not  offer 
to  build  houses  and  barns  thereon,  —  reverencing 
the  splendor  of  the  God  which  he  sees  bursting 
through  each  chink  and  cranny. 

The  world  is  filled  with  the  proverbs  and  acts 
and  winkings  of  a  base  prudence,  which  is  a  devo 
tion  to  matter,  as  if  we  possessed  no  other  faculties 
than  the  palate,  the  nose,  the  touch,  the  eye  and 
ear ;  a  prudence  which  adores  the  Rule  of  Three, 
which  never  subscribes,- which  never  gives,  which 
seldom  lends,  and  asks  but  one  question  of  any  pro 
ject,  —  Will  it  bake  bread?  This  is  a  disease  like 
a  thickening  of  the  skin  until  the  vital  organs  are 
destroyed.  But  culture,  revealing  the  high  origin 
of  the  apparent  world  and  aiming  at  the  perfection 
of  the  man  as  the  end,  degrades  every  thing  else, 
as  health  and  bodily  life,  into  means.  It  sees  pru 
dence  not  to  be  a  several  faculty,  but  a  name  for 
wisdom  and  virtue  conversing  with  the  body  and 
its  wants.  Cultivated  men  always  feel  and  speak 
BO,  as  if  a  great  fortune,  the  achievement  of  a  civil 
or  social  measure,  great  personal  influence,  a  grace- 


212  PRUDENCE. 

ful  and  commanding  address,  had  their  value  as 
proofs  of  the  energy  of  the  spirit.  If  a  man  lose 
his  balance  and  immerse  himself  in  any  trades 
or  pleasures  for  their  own  sake,  he  may  be  a  good 
wheel  or  pin,  but  he  is  not  a  cultivated  man. 

The  spurious  prudence,  making  the  senses  final, 
is  the  god  of  sots  and  cowards,  and  is  the  subject 
of  all  comedy.  It  is  nature's  joke,  and  therefore 
literature's.  The  true  prudence  limits  this  sensual 
ism  by  admitting  the  knowledge  of  an  internal  and 
real  world.  This  recognition  once  made,  the  or 
der  of  the  world  and  the  distribution  of  affairs  and 
times,  being  studied  with  the  co-perception  of  their 
subordinate  glace,  will  reward  any  degree  of  atten 
tion.  For  our  existence,  thus  apparently  attached 
in  nature  to  the  sun  and  the  returning  moon  and 
the  periods  which  they  mark,  —  so  susceptible  to 
climate  and  to  country,  so  alive  to  social  good  and 
evil,  so  fond  of  splendor  and  so  tender  to  hunger 
and  cold  and  debt,  —  reads  all  its  primary  lessons 
out  of  these  books. 

Prudence  does  not  go  behind  nature  and  ask 
whence  it  is.  It  takes  the  laws  of  the  world 
whereby  man's  being  is  conditioned,  as  they  are, 
and  keeps  these  laws  that  it  may  enjoy  their  proper 
good.  It  respects  space  and  time,  climate,  want, 
sleep,  the  law  of  polarity,  growth  and  death.  There 
tevolve,  to  give  bound  and  period  to  his  being  on 


PRUDENCE.  213 

all  sides,  the  sun  and  moon,  the  great  formalists  in 
the  sky :  here  lies  stubborn  matter,  and  will  not 
swerve  from  its  chemical  routine.  Here  is  a 
planted  globe,  pierced  and  belted  with  natural  laws 
and  fenced  and  distributed  externally  with  civil 
partitions  and  properties  which  impose  new  re 
straints  on  the  young  inhabitant. 

We  eat  of  the  bread  which  grows  in  the  fieldo 
We  live  by  the  air  which  blows  around  us  and  we 
are  poisoned  by  the  air  that  is  too  cold  or  too  hot, 
too  dry  or  too  wet.  Time,  which  shows  so  vacant, 
indivisible  and  divine  in  its  coming,  is  slit  and 
peddled  into  trifles  and  tatters.  A  door  is  to  be 
painted,  a  lock  to  be  repaired.  I  want  wood  or  oil, 
or  meal  or  salt ;  the  house  smokes,  or  I  have  a 
headache ;  then  the  tax,  and  an  affair  to  be  trans 
acted  with  a  man  without  heart  or  brains,  and  the 
stinging  recollection  of  an  injurious  or  very  awk 
ward  word,  —  these  eat  up  the  hours.  Do  what 
we  can,  summer  will  have  its  flies  ;  if  we  walk  in 
the  woods  we  must  feed  mosquitos ;  if  we  go  a-fish- 
ing  we  must  expect  a  wet  coat.  Then  climate  is  a 
great  impediment  to  idle  persons  ;  we  often  resolve 
to  give  up  the  care  of  the  weather,  but  still  we  re 
gard  the  clouds  and  the  rain. 

We  are  instructed  by  these  petty  experiences 
which  usurp  the  hours  and  y^ars.  The  hard  soil 
and  four  months  of  snow  make  the  inhabitant  of 


214  PRUDENCE. 

the  northern  temperate  zone  wiser  and  abler  than 
his  fellow  who  enjoys  the  fixed  smile  of  the  tropics. 
The  islander  may  ramble  all  day  at  will.  At 
night  he  may  sleep  on  a  mat  under  the  moon,  and 
wherever  a  wild  date-tree  grows,  nature  has,  with 
out  a  prayer  even,  spread  a  table  for  his  morning 
meal.  The  northerner  is  perforce  a  householder. 
He  must  brew,  bake,  salt  and  preserve  his  food, 
and  pile  wood  and  coal.  But  as  it  happens  that 
not  one  stroke  can  labor  lay  to  without  some  new 
acquaintance  with  nature,  and  as  nature  is  inex 
haustibly  significant,  the  inhabitants  of  these  cli 
mates  have  always  excelled  the  southerner  in  force. 
Such  is  the  value  of  these  matters  that  a  man  who 
knows  other  things  can  never  know  too  much  of 
these.  Let  him  have  accurate  perceptions.  Let 
him,  if  he  have  hands,  handle ;  if  eyes,  measure  and 
discriminate  ;  let  him  accept  and  hive  every  fact  of 
chemistry,  natural  history  and  economics  ;  the  more 
he  has,  the  less  is  he  willing  to  spare  any  one. 
Time  is  always  bringing  the  occasions  that  disclose 
their  value.  Some  wisdom  comes  out  of  every  nat 
ural  and  innocent  action.  The  domestic  man,  who 
loves  no  music  so  well  as  his  kitchen  clock  and  the 
airs  which  the  logs  sing  to  him  as  they  burn  on  the 
hearth,  has  solaces  which  others  never  dream  of. 
The  application  of  means  to  ends  insures  victory 
and  the  songs  of  victory  not  less  in  a  farm  or  a 


PRUDENCE.  215 

shop  than  in  the  tactics  of  party  or  of  war.  The 
good  husband  finds  method  as  efficient  in  the  pack 
ing  of  fire-wood  in  a  shed  or  in  the  harvesting  of 
fruits  in  the  cellar,  as  in  Peninsular  campaigns  or 
the  files  of  the  Department  of  State.  In  the  rainy 
day  he  builds  a  work-bench,  or  gets  his  tool-box 
set  in  the  corner  of  the  barn-chamber,  and  stored 
with  nails,  gimlet,  pincers,  screwdriver  and  chiseL 
Herein  he  tastes  an  old  joy  of  youth  and  childhood, 
the  cat-like  love  of  garrets,  presses  and  corn-cham 
bers,  and  of  the  conveniences  of  long  housekeeping. 
His  garden  or  his  poultry-yard  tells  him  many 
pleasant  anecdotes.  One  might  find  argument  for 
optimism  in  the  abundant  flow  of  this  saccharine 
element  of  pleasure  in  every  suburb  and  extremity 
of  the  good  world.  Let  a  man  keep  the  law,  — 
any  law,  —  and  his  way  will  be  strown  with  satis 
factions.  There  is  more  difference  in  the  quality 
of  our  pleasures  than  in  the  amount. 

On  the  other  hand,  nature  punishes  any  neglect 
of  prudence.  If  you  think  the  senses  final,  obey 
their  law.  If  you  believe  in  the  soul,  do  not  clutch 
at  sensual  sweetness  before  it  is  ripe  on  the  slow  tree 
of  cause  and  effect.  It  is  vinegar  to  the  eyes  to 
deal  with  men  of  loose  and  imperfect  perception. 
Dr.  Johnson  is  reported  to  have  said,  —  "If  the 
child  says  he  looked  out  of  this  window,  when  he 
looked  out  of  that,  —  whip  him."  Our  American 


216  PRUDENCE. 

character  is  marked  by  a  more  than  average  delight 
in  accurate  perception,  which  is  shown  by  the  cur 
rency  of  the  byword,  "  No  mistake."  But  the  dis 
comfort  of  unpunctuality,  of  confusion  of  thought 
about  facts,  inattention  to  the  wants  of  to-morrow, 
is  of  no  nation.  The  beautiful  laws  of  time  and 
space,  once  dislocated  by  our  inaptitude,  are  holes 
and  dens.  If  the  hive  be  disturbed  by  rash  and 
stupid  hands,  instead  of  honey  it  will  yield  us  bees. 
Our  words  and  actions  to  be  fair  must  be  timely. 
A  gay  and  pleasant  sound  is  the  whetting  of  the 
scythe  in  the  mornings  of  June,  yet  what  is  more 
lonesome  and  sad  than  the  sound  of  a  whetstone  or 
mower's  rifle  when  it  is  too  late  in  the  season  to 
make  hay?  Scatter-brained  and  "  afternoon  "  men 
spoil  much  more  than  their  own  affair  in  spoiling 
the  temper  of  those  who  deal  with  them.  I  have 
seen  a  criticism  on  some  paintings,  of  which  I  am 
reminded  when  I  see  the  shiftless  and  unhappy  men 
who  are  not  true  to  their  senses.  The  last  Grand 
Duke  of  Weimar,  a  man  of  superior  understanding, 
said,  —  "I  have  sometimes  remarked  in  the  presence 
of  great  works  of  art,  and  just  now  especially  in 
Dresden,  how  much  a  certain  property  contributes 
to  the  effect  which  gives  life  to  the  figures,  and  to 
the  life  an  irresistible  truth.  This  property  is  the 
bitting,  in  all  the  figures  we  draw,  the  right  centre 
cf  gravity.  I  mean  the  placing  the  figures  firm 


PRUDENCE.  217 

upon  their  feet,  making  the  hands  grasp,  and  fasten 
ing  the  eyes  on  the  spot  where  they  should  look. 
Even  lifeless  figures,  as  vessels  and  stools  —  let 
them  be  drawn  ever  so  correctly  —  lose  all  effect  so 
soon  as  they  lack  the  resting  upon  their  centre  of 
gravity,  and  have  a  certain  swimming  and  oscillat 
ing  appearance.  The  Raphael  in  the  Dresden  gal 
lery  (the  only  great  affecting  picture  which  I  have 
seen)  is  the  quietest  and  most  passionless  piece  you 
can  imagine ;  a  couple  of  saints  who  worship  the 
Virgin  and  Child.  Nevertheless  it  awakens  a  deeper 
impression  than  the  contortions  of  ten  crucified 
martyrs.  For  beside  all  the  resistless  beauty  of 
form,  it  possesses  in  the  highest  degree  the  property 
of  the  perpendicularity  of  all  the  figures."  This 
perpendicularity  we  demand  of  all  the  figures  in 
this  picture  of  life.  Let  them  stand  on  their  feet, 
and  not  float  and  swing.  Let  us  know  where  to  find 
them.  Let  them  discriminate  between  what  they 
remember  and  what  they  dreamed,  call  a  spade  a 
spade,  give  us  facts,  and  honor  their  own  senses 
with  trust. 

But  what  man  shall  dare  task  another  with  im 
prudence  ?  Who  is  prudent  ?  The  men  we  call 
greatest  are  least  in  this  kingdom.  There  is  a  cer 
tain  fatal  dislocation  in  our  relation  to  nature,  dis 
torting  our  modes  of  living  and  making  every  law 
our  enemy,  which  seems  at  last  to  have  aroused  all 


218  PRUDENCE. 

the  wit  and  virtue  in  the  world  to  ponder  the  ques 
tion  of  Reform.  We  must  call  the  highest  prudence 
to  counsel,  and  ask  why  health  and  beauty  and  ge 
nius  should  now  be  the  exception  rather  than  the 
rule  of  human  nature  ?  We  do  not  know  the  prop 
erties  of  plants  and  animals  and  the  laws  of  nature, 
through  our  sympathy  with  the  same ;  but  this  re 
mains  the  dream  of  poets.  Poetry  and  prudence 
should  be  coincident.  Poets  should  be  lawgivers  ; 
that  is,  the  boldest  lyric  inspiration  should  not  chide 
and  insult,  but  should  announce  and  lead  the  civil 
code  and  the  day's  work.  But  now  the  two  things 
seem  irreconcilably  parted.  We  have  violated  law 
upon  law  until  we  stand  amidst  ruins,  and  when  by 
chance  we  espy  a  coincidence  between  reason  and 
the  phenomena,  we  are  surprised.  Beauty  should 
be  the  dowry  of  every  man  and  woman,  as  invariably 
as  sensation  ;  but  it  is  rare.  Health  or  sound  or 
ganization  should  be  universal.  Genius  should  be 
the  child  of  genius  and  every  child  should  be  in 
spired  ;  but  now  it  is  not  to  be  predicted  of  any 
child,  and  nowhere  is  it  pure.  We  call  partial  half- 
lights,  by  courtesy,  genius ;  talent  which  converts 
itself  to  money  ;  talent  which  glitters  to-day  that  it 
may  dine  and  sleep  well  to-morrow ;  and  society  is 
officered  by  men  of  parts,  as  they  are  properly 
called,  and  not  by  divine  men.  These  use  their 
gift  to  refine  luxury,  not  to  abolish  it.  Genius  is 


PRUDENCE.  219 

always  ascetic,  and  piety,  and  love.  Appetite  shows 
to  the  finer  souls  as  a  disease,  and  they  find  beauty 
in.  rites  and  bounds  that  resist  it. 

We  have  found  out  fine  names  to  cover  our  sen 
suality  withal,  but  no  gifts  can  raise  intemperance. 
The  man  of  talent  affects  to  call  his  transgressions 
of  the  laws  of  the  senses  trivial  and  to  count  them 
nothing  considered  with  his  devotion  to  his  art. 
His  art  never  taught  him  lewdness,  nor  the  love  of 
wine,  nor  the  wish  to  reap  where  he  had  not  sowed. 
His  art  is  less  for  every  deduction  from  his  holi 
ness,  and  less  for  every  defect  of  common  sense. 
On  him  who  scorned  the  world  as  he  said,  the 
scorned  world  wreaks  its  revenge.  He  that  de- 
spiseth  small  things  will  perish  by  little  and  little. 
Goethe's  Tasso  is  very  likely  to  be  a  pretty  fair 
historical  portrait,  and  that  is  true  tragedy.  It 
does  not  seem  to  me  so  genuine  grief  when  some 
tyrannous  Richard  the  Third  oppresses  and  slays 
a  score  of  innocent  persons,  as  when  Antonio  and 
Tasso,  both  apparently  right,  wrong  each  other. 
One  living  after  the  maxims  of  this  world  and  con 
sistent  and  true  to  them,  the  other  fired  with  all  di 
vine  sentiments,  yet  grasping  also  at  the  pleasures 
of  sense,  without  submitting  to  their  law.  That  is 
a  grief  we  all  feel,  a  knot  we  cannot  untie.  Tasso's 
is  no  unfrequent  case  in  modern  biography.  A 
man  of  genius,  of  an  ardent  temperament,  reckless 


220  PRUDENCE. 

of  physical  laws,  self-indulgent,  becomes  presently 
unfortunate,  querulous,  a  "  discomfortable  cousin," 
a  thorn  to  himself  and  to  others. 

The  scholar  shames  us  by  his  bifold  life.  Whilst 
something  higher  than  prudence  is  active,  he  is  ad 
mirable  ;  when  common  sense  is  wanted,  he  is  an 
encumbrance.  Yesterday,  Ca3sar  was  not  so  great ; 
to-day,  the  felon  at  the  gallows'  foot  is  not  more 
miserable.  Yesterday,  radiant  with  the  light  of  an 
ideal  world  in  which  he  lives,  the  first  of  men  ;  and 
now  oppressed  by  wants  and  by  sickness,  for  which 
he  must  thank  himself.  He  resembles  the  pitiful 
drivellers  whom  travellers  describe  as  frequenting 
the  bazaars  of  Constantinople,  who  skulk  about  all 
day,  yellow,  emaciated,  ragged,  sneaking ;  and  at 
evening,  when  the  bazaars  are  open,  slink  to  the 
opium-shop,  swallow  their  morsel  and  become  tran 
quil  and  glorified  seers.  And  who  has  not  seen 
the  tragedy  of  imprudent  genius  struggling  for 
years  with  paltry  pecuniary  difficulties,  at  last  sink 
ing,  chilled,  exhausted  and  fruitless,  like  a  giant 
slaughtered  by  pins  ? 

Is  it  not  better  that  a  man  should  accept  the  first 
pains  and  mortifications  of  this  sort,  which  nature 
is  not  slack  in  sending  him,  as  hints  that  he  must 
expect  no  other  good  than  the  just  fruit  of  his  own 
labor  and  self-denial  ?  Health,  bread,  climate,  so 
cial  position,  have  their  importance,  and  he  wil] 


PRUDENCE.  221 

give  them  their  due.  Let  him  esteem  Nature  a 
perpetual  counsellor,  and  her  perfections  the  exact 
measure  of  our  deviations.  Let  him  make  the 
night  night,  and  the  day  day.  Let  him  control 
the  habit  of  expense.  Let  him  see  that  as  much 
wisdom  may  b^  expended  on  a  private  economy  as 
on  an  empire,  and  as  much  wisdom  may  be  drawn 
from  it.  The  laws  of  the  world  are  written  out  for 
him  on  every  piece  of  money  in  his  hand.  There 
is  nothing  he  will  not  be  the  better  for  knowing, 
were  it  only  the  wisdom  of  Poor  Richard,  or  the 
State-Street  prudence  of  buying  by  the  acre  to  sell 
by  the  foot ;  or  the  thrift  of  the  agriculturist,  to 
stick  a  tree  between  whiles,  because  it  will  grow 
whilst  he  sleeps ;  or  the  prudence  which  consists  in 
husbanding  little  strokes  of  the  tool,  little  portions 
of  time,  particles  of  stock  and  small  gains.  The 
eye  of  prudence  may  never  shut.  Iron,  if  kept  at 
the  ironmonger's,  will  rust ;  beer,  if  not  brewed  in 
the  right  state  of  the  atmosphere,  will  sour ;  timber 
of  ships  will  rot  at  sea,  or  if  laid  up  high  and  dry, 
will  strain,  warp  and  dry-rot ;  money,  if  kept  by  us, 
yields  no  rent  and  is  liable  to  loss ;  if  invested,  is 
liable  to  depreciation  of  the  particular  kind  of 
stock.  Strike,  says  the  smith,  the  iron  is  white  ; 
keep  the  rake,  says  the  haymaker,  as  nigh  the 
icythe  as  you  can,  and  the  cart  as  nigh  the  rake. 
Our  Yankee  trade  is  reputed  to  be  very  much  on 


222  PRUDENCE. 

the  extreme  of  this  prudence.  It  takes  bank-notes, 
good,  bad,  clean,  ragged,  and  saves  itself  by  the 
speed  with  which  it  passes  them  off.  Iron  cannot 
rust,  nor  beer  sour,  nor  timber  rot,  nor  calicoes  go 
out  of  fashion,  nor  money  stocks  depreciate,  in  the 
few  swift  moments  in  which  the  Yankee  suffers 
any  one  of  them  to  remain  in  his  possession.  In 
skating  over  thin  ice  our  safety  is  in  our  speed. 

Let  him  learn  a  prudence  of  a  higher  strain. 
Let  him  learn  that  every  thing  in  nature,  even 
motes  and  feathers,  go  by  law  and  not  by  luck,  and 
that  what  he  sows  he  reaps.  By  diligence  and  self- 
command  let  him  put  the  bread  he  eats  at  his  own 
disposal,  that  he  may  not  stand  in  bitter  and  false 
relations  to  other  men  ;  for  the  best  good  of  wealth 
is  freedom.  Let  him  practise  the  minor  virtues. 
How  much  of  human  life  is  lost  in  waiting !  let  him 
not  make  his  fellow-creatures  wait.  How  many 
words  and  promises  are  promises  of  conversation  ! 
Let  his  be  words  of  fate.  When  he  sees  a  folded 
and  sealed  scrap  of  paper  float  round  the  globe  in 
a  pine  ship  and  come  safe  to  the  eye  for  which  it 
was  written,  amidst  a  swarming  population,  let  him 
likewise  feel  the  admonition  to  integrate  his  being 
across  all  these  distracting  forces,  and  keep  a  slen 
der  human  word  among  the  storms,  distances  and 
accidents  that  drive  us  hither  and  thither,  and,  by 
persistency,  make  the  paltry  force  of  one  man  re. 


PRUDENCE.  223 

appear  to  redeem  its  pledge  after  months  and 
years  in  the  most  distant  climates. 

We  must  not  try  to  write  the  laws  of  any  one 
virtue,  looking  at  that  only.  Human  nature  loves 
no  contradictions,  but  is  symmetrical.  The  pru 
dence  which  secures  an  outward  well-being  is  not 
to  be  studied  by  one  set  of  men,  whilst  heroism  and 
holiness  are  studied  by  another,  but  they  are  recon 
cilable.  Prudence  concerns  the  present  time,  per- 
sons,  property  and  existing  forms.  But  as  every 
fact  hath  its  roots  in  the  soul,  and  if  the  soul  were 
changed  would  cease  to  be,  or  would  become  some 
other  thing,  —  the  proper  administration  of  outward 
things  will  always  rest  on  a  just  apprehension  of 
their  cause  and  origin  ;  that  is,  the  good  man  will 
be  the  wise  man,  and  the  single-hearted  the  politic 
man.  Every  violation  of  truth  is  not  only  a  sort  of 
suicide  in  the  liar,  but  is  a  stab  at  the  health  of 
human  society.  On  the  most  profitable  lie  the 
course  of  events  presently  lays  a  destructive  tax  ; 
whilst  frankness  invites  frankness,  puts  the  parties 
on  a  convenient  footing  and  makes  their  business  a 
friendship.  Trust  men  and  they  will  be  true  to 
you  ;  treat  them  greatly  and  they  will  show  them 
selves  great,  though  they  make  an  exception  in 
your  favor  to  all  their  rules  of  trade. 

So,  in  regard  to  disagreeable  and  formidable 
things,  prudence  does  not  consist  in  evasion  or  in 


224  PRUDENCE. 

flight,  but  in  courage.  He  who  wishes  to  walk  in 
the  most  peaceful  parts  of  life  with  any  serenity 
must  screw  himself  up  to  resolution.  Let  him  front 
the  object  of  his  worst  apprehension,  and  his  stout 
ness  will  commonly  make  his  fear  groundless.  The 
Latin  proverb  says,  "  In  battles  the  eye  is  first  over 
come."  Entire  self-possession  may  make  a  battle 
very  little  more  dangerous  to  life  than  a  match  at 
foils  or  at  football.  Examples  are  cited  by  soldiers 
of  men  who  have  seen  the  cannon  pointed  and  the 
fire  given  to  it,  and  who  have  stepped  aside  from 
the  path  of  the  ball.  The  terrors  of  the  storm  are 
chiefly  confined  to  the  parlor  and  the  cabin.  The 
drover,  the  sailor,  buffets  it  all  day,  and  his  health 
renews  itself  at  as  vigorous  a  pulse  under  the  sleet 
as  under  the  sun  of  June. 

In  the  occurrence  of  unpleasant  things  among 
neighbors,  fear  comes  readily  to  heart  and  magni 
fies  the  consequence  of  the  other  party  ;  but  it  is  a 
bad  counsellor.  Every  man  is  actually  weak  and 
apparently  strong.  To  himself  he  seems  weak  ;  to 
others,  formidable.  You  are  afraid  of  Grim ;  but 
Grim  also  is  afraid  of  you.  You  are  solicitous  of 
the  good-will  of  the  meanest  person,  uneasy  at  his 
ill-will.  But  the  sturdiest  offender  of  your  peace 
and  of  the  neighborhood,  if  you  rip  up  his  claims, 
is  as  thin  and  timid  as  any,  and  the  peace  of  society 
is  often  kept,  because,  as  children  say,  one  is  afraid 


PRUDENCE.  225 

and  the  other  dares  not.  Far  off,  men  swell,  bully 
and  threaten  ;  bring  them  hand  to  hand,  and  they 
are  a  feeble  folk. 

It  is  a  proverb  that  *  courtesy  costs  nothing ' ;  but 
calculation  might  come  to  value  love  for  its  profit. 
Love  is  fabled  to  be  blind,  but  kindness  is  neces* 
sary  to  perception  ;  love  is  not  a  hood,  but  an  eye 
water.  If  you  meet  a  sectary  or  a  hostile  partisan, 
never  recognize  the  dividing  lines,  but  meet  on  what 
common  ground  remains,  —  if  only  that  the  sun 
shines  and  the  rain  rains  for  both ;  the  area  will 
widen  very  fast,  and  ere  you  know  it,  the  boundary 
mountains  on  which  the  eye  had  fastened  have 
melted  into  air.  If  they  set  out  to  contend,  Saint 
Paul  will  lie  and  Saint  John  will  hate.  What  low, 
poor,  paltry,  hypocritical  people  an  argument  on 
religion  will  make  of  the  pure  and  chosen  souls  ? 
They  will  shuffle  and  crow,  crook  and  hide,  feign 
to  confess  here,  only  that  they  may  brag  and  con 
quer  there,  and  not  a  thought  has  enriched  either 
party,  and  not  an  emotion  of  bravery,  modesty,  or 
hope.  So  neither  should  you  put  yourself  in  a  false 
position  with  your  contemporaries  by  indulging 
a  vein  of  hostility  and  bitterness.  Though  your 
views  are  in  straight  antagonism  to  theirs,  assume 
an  identity  of  sentiment,  assume  that  you  are  say 
ing  precisely  that  which  all  think,  and  in  the  flow 
V)f  wit  and  love  roll  out  your  paradoxes  in  solid 

VOL.  HJ  15 


226  PRUDENCE. 

column,  with  not  the  infirmity  of  a  doubt.  So  at 
least  shall  you  get  an  adequate  deliverance.  The 
natural  motions  of  the  soul  are  so  much  better  than 
the  voluntary  ones  that  you  will  never  do  yourself 
justice  in  dispute.  The  thought  is  not  then  taken 
hold  of  by  the  right  handle,  does  not  show  itself 
proportioned  and  in  its  true  bearings,  but  bears  ex 
torted,  hoarse,  and  half  witness.  But  assume  a  con 
sent  and  it  shall  presently  be  granted,  since  -really 
and  underneath  their  external  diversities,  all  men 
are  of  one  heart  and  mind. 

Wisdom  will  never  let  us  stand  with  any  man  or 
men  on  an  unfriendly  footing.  We  refuse  sympa 
thy  and  intimacy  with  people,  as  if  we  waited  for 
some  better  sympathy  and  intimacy  to  come.  But 
whence  and  when  ?  To-morrow  will  be  like  to-day. 
Life  wastes  itself  whilst  we  are  preparing  to  live. 
Our  friends  and  fellow-workers  die  off  from  us. 
Scarcely  can  we  say  we  see  new  men,  new  women, 
approaching  us.  We  are  too  old  to  regard  fashion, 
too  old  to  expect  patronage  of  any  greater  or  more 
powerful.  Let  us  suck  the  sweetness  of  those  affec 
tions  and  consuetudes  that  grow  near  us.  These 
old  shoes  are  easy  to  the  feet.  Undoubtedly  we 
can  easily  pick  faults  in  our  company,  can  easily 
whisper  names  prouder,  and  that  tickle  the  fancy 
more.  Every  man's  imagination  hath  its  friends  ; 
life  would  be  dearer  with  such  companions. 


PRUDENCE.  227 

But  if  you  cannot  have  them  on  good  mutual  terms, 
you  cannot  have  them.  If  not  the  Deity  but  our 
ambition  hews  and  shapes  the  new  relations,  their 
virtue  escapes,  as  strawberries  lose  their  flavor  in 
garden-beds. 

Thus  truth,  frankness,  courage,  love,  humility 
and  all  the  virtues  range  themselves  on  the  side  of 
prudence,  or  the  art  of  securing  a  present  well-be 
ing.  I  do  not  know  if  all  matter  will  be  found  to 
be  made  of  one  element,  as  oxygen  or  hydrogen,  at 
last,  but  the  world  of  manners  and  actions  is 
wrought  of  one  stuff,  and  begin  where  we  will  we 
are  pretty  sure  in  a  short  space  to  be  mumbling  our 
ten  commandments. 


HEROISM. 


**  Paradise  is  under  the  shadow  of  swords." 

Mahomet.. 


RUBY  wine  is  drunk  by  knaves, 
Sugar  spends  to  fatten  slaves, 
Rose  and  vine-leaf  deck  buffoons ; 
Thunderclouds  are  Jove's  festoons, 
Drooping  oft  in  wreaths  of  dread 
Lightning-knotted  round  his  head  ; 
The  hero  is  not  fed  on  sweets, 
Daily  his  own  heart  he  eats  ; 
Chambers  of  the  great  are  jails, 
And  head-winds  right  for  royal  sails,. 


vm. 

HEROISM. 


IN  the  elder  English  dramatists,  and  mainly  in 
the  plays  of  Beaumont  and  Fletcher,  there  is  a  con 
stant  recognition  of  gentility,  as  if  a  noble  behavior 
were  as  easily  marked  in  the  society  of  their  age  as 
color  is  in  our  American  population.  When  any 
Rodrigo,  Pedro  or  Valerio  enters,  though  he  be  a 
stranger,  the  duke  or  governor  exclaims,  '  This  is  a 
gentleman,'  —  and  proffers  civilities  without  end  ; 
but  all  the  rest  are  slag  and  refuse.  In  harmony 
with  this  delight  in  personal  advantages  there  is  in 
their  plays  a  certain  heroic  cast  of  character  and 
dialogue,  —  as  in  Bonduca,  Sophocles,  the  Mad 
Lover,  the  Double  Marriage,  —  wherein  the  speaker 
is  so  earnest  and  cordial  and  on  such  deep  grounds 
of  character,  that  the  dialogue,  on  the  slightest  ad 
ditional  incident  in  the  plot,  rises  naturally  into 
poetry.  Among  many  texts  take  the  following.  The 
Roman  Martins  has  conquered  Athens,  —  all  but 
the  invincible  spirits  of  Sophocles,  the  duke  of  Ath 
ens,  and  Dorigen,  his  wife.  The  beauty  of  the 


232  HEROISM. 

latter  inflames  Martins,  and  he  seeks  to  save  her 
husband ;  but  Sophocles  will  not  ask  his  life,  al 
though  assured  that  a  word  will  save  him,  and  tho 
execution  of  both  proceeds  :  — 

Valerius.     Bid  thy  wife  farewell. 

Soph.     No,  I  will  take  no  leave.     My  Dorigen, 
Yonder,  above,  'bout  Ariadne's  crown, 
My  spirit  shall  hover  for  thee.     Prithee,  haste. 

Dor.     Stay,  Sophocles, —  with  this  tie  up  my  sight; 
Let  not  soft  nature  so  transformed  be, 
And  lose  her  gentler  sexed  humanity, 
To  make  me  see  my  lord  bleed.     So,  't  is  well; 
Never  one  object  underneath  the  sun 
Will  I  behold  before  my  Sophocles: 
Farewell;  now  teach  the  Romans  how  to  die. 

Mar.     Dost  know  what  't  is  to  die  ? 

Soph.     Thou  dost  not,  Martius, 
And,  therefore,  not  what  't  is  to  live ;  to  die 
Is  to  begin  to  live.     It  is  to  end 
An  old,  stale,  weary  work  and  to  commence 
A  newer  and  a  better.     'T  is  to  leave 
Deceitful  knaves  for  the  society 
Of  gods  and  goodness.     Thou  thyself  must  part 
At  last  from  all  thy  garlands,  pleasures,  triumphs, 
And  prove  thy  fortitude  what  then  't  will  do. 

Vol.     But  art  not  grieved  nor  vexed  to  leave  thy  life  thus9 

Soph.     Why  should  I  grieve  or  vex  for  being  sent 
To  them  I  ever  loved  best  ?     Now  I  '11  kneel, 
But  with  my  back  toward  thee :  't  is  the  last  duty 
This  trunk  can  do  the  gods. 

Mar.     Strike,  strike,  Valerius, 
Or  Martins'  heart  will  leap  out  at  his  mouth. 


HEROISM.  233 

This  is  a  man,  a  woman.     Kiss  thy  lord, 
And  live  with  all  the  freedom  you  were  wont. 

0  love!   thou  doubly  hast  afflicted  me 

With  virtue  and  with  beauty.     Treacherous  heart, 
My  hand  shall  cast  thee  quick  into  my  urn, 
Ere  thou  transgress  this  knot  of  piety. 

Val.     What  ails  my  brother  ? 

Soph,     Martius,  O  Martius, 
Thou  now  hast  found  a  way  to  conquer  me. 

Dor.     O  star  of  Rome!    what  gratitude  can  speak 
Fit  words  to  follow  such  a  deed  as  this  ? 

Mar.     This  admirable  duke,  Valerius, 
With  his  disdain  of  fortune  and  of  death, 
Captived  himself,  has  captivated  me, 
And  though  my  arm  hath  ta'en  his  body  here, 
His  soul  hath  subjugated  Martius'  soul. 
By  Romulus,  he  is  all  soul,  I  think; 
He  hath  no  flesh,  and  spirit  cannot  be  gyved, 
Then  we  have  vanquished  nothing;  he  is  free, 
And  Martius  walks  now  in  captivity." 

1  do  not  readily  remember  any  poem,  play,  ser 
mon,  novel  or  oration  that  our  press  vents  in  the  last 
few  years,  which  goes  to  the  same  tune.     We  have  a 
great  many  flutes  and  flageolets,  but  not  often  the 
sound  of  any  fife.    Yet  Wordsworth's  "Laodamia," 
and  the  ode  of  "  Dion,"  and  some  sonnets,  have  a 
certain  noble  music  ;  and  Scott  will  sometimes  draw 
a  stroke  like  the  portrait  of  Lord  Evandale  given 
by  Balfour  of  Burley.     Thomas  Carlyle,  with  his 
natural  taste  for  what  is  manly  and  daring  in  char- 


234  HEROISM. 

acter,  has  suffered  no  heroic  trait  in  his  favorites  to 
drop  from  his  biographical  and  historical  pictures. 
Earlier,  Robert  Burns  has  given  us  a  song  or  two. 
In  the  Harleian  Miscellanies  there  is  an  account  of 
the  battle  of  Lutzen  which  deserves  to  be  read. 
And  Simon  Ockley's  History  of  the  Saracens  re- 
counts  the  prodigies  of  individual  valor,  with  admi 
ration  all  the  more  evident  on  the  part  of  the  narra 
tor  that  he  seems  to  think  that  his  place  in  Christian 
Oxford  requires  of  him  some  proper  protestations 
of  abhorrence.  But  if  we  explore  the  literature  of 
Heroism  we  shall  quickly  come  to  Plutarch,  who  is 
its  Doctor  and  historian.  To  him  we  owe  the 
Brasidas,  the  Dion,  the  Epaminondas,  the  Scipio  of 
old,  and  I  must  think  we  are  more  deeply  indebted 
to  him  than  to  all  the  ancient  writers.  Each  of  his 
"Lives"  is  a  refutation  to  the  despondency  and 
cowardice  of  our  religious  and  political  theorists. 
A  wild  courage,  a  Stoicism  not  of  the  schools  but 
of  the  blood,  shines  in  every  anecdote,  and  has  given 
that  book  its  immense  fame. 

We  need  books  of  this  tart  cathartic  virtue  more 
than  books  of  political  science  or  of  private  econ 
omy.  Life  is  a  festival  only  to  the  wise.  Seen  from 
the  nook  and  chimney-side  of  prudence,  it  wears  a 
ragged  and  dangerous  front.  The  violations  of  the 
laws  of  nature  by  our  predecessors  and  our  contem 
poraries  are  punished  in  us  also.  The  disease  and 


HEROISM.  235 

deformity  around  us  certify  the  infraction  of  natural, 
intellectual  and  moral  laws,  and  often  violation  on 
violation  to  breed  such  compound  misery.  A  lock 
jaw  that  bends  a  man's  head  back  to  his  heels ;  hy 
drophobia  that  makes  him  bark  at  his  wife  and 
babes  ;  insanity  that  makes  him  eat  grass ;  war, 
plague,  cholera,  famine,  indicate  a  certain  ferocity 
in  nature,  which,  as  it  had  its  inlet  by  human  crime, 
must  have  its  outlet  by  human  suffering.  Unhap 
pily  no  man  exists  who  has  not  in  his  own  person 
become  to  some  amount  a  stockholder  in  the  sin, 
and  so  made  himself  liable  to  a  share  in  the  ex 
piation. 

Our  culture  therefore  must  not  omit  the  arming 
of  the  man.  Let  him  hear  in  season  that  he  is 
born  into  the  state  of  war,  and  that  the  common 
wealth  and  his  own  well-being  require  that  he 
should  not  go  dancing  in  the  weeds  of  peace,  but 
warned,  self  -  collected  and  neither  defying  nor 
dreading  the  thunder,  let  him  take  both  reputation 
and  life  in  his  hand,  and  with  perfect  urbanity  dare 
the  gibbet  and  the  mob  by  the  absolute  truth  of 
his  speech  and  the  rectitude  of  his  behavior. 

Towards  all  this  external  evil  the  man  within 
the  breast  assumes  a  warlike  attitude,  and  affirms 
his  ability  to  cope  single-handed  with  the  infinite 
army  of  enemies.  To  this  military  attitude  of  the 
soul  we  give  the  name  of  Heroism.  Its  rudest 


236  HEROISM. 

form  is  the  contempt  for  safety  and  ease,  which 
makes  the  attractiveness  of  war.  It  is  a  self-trust 
which  slights  the  restraints  of  prudence,  in  the 
plenitude  of  its  energy  and  power  to  repair  the 
harms  it  may  suffer.  The  hero  is  a  mind  of  such 
balance  that  no  disturbances  can  shake  his  will,  but 
pleasantly  and  as  it  were  merrily  he  advances  to 
his  own  music,  alike  in  frightful  alarms  and  in  the 
tipsy  mirth  of  universal  dissoluteness.  There  is 
somewhat  not  philosophical  in  heroism ;  there  is 
somewhat  not  holy  in  it ;  it  seems  not  to  know  that 
other  souls  are  of  one  texture  with  it ;  it  has  pride  ; 
it  is  the  extreme  of  individual  nature.  Neverthe 
less  we  must  profoundly  revere  it.  There  is  some 
what  in  great  actions  which  does  not  allow  us  to  go 
behind  them.  Heroism  feels  and  never  reasons, 
and  therefore  is  always  right ;  and  although  a  dif 
ferent  breeding,  different  religion  and  greater  in 
tellectual  activity  would  have  modified  or  even  re 
versed  the  particular  action,  yet  for  the  hero  that 
thing  he  does  is  the  highest  deed,  and  is  not  open 
to  the  censure  of  philosophers  or  divines.  It  is  the 
avowal  of  the  unschooled  man  that  he  finds  a  qual 
ity  in  him  that  is  negligent  of  expense,  of  health, 
of  life,  of  danger,  of  hatred,  of  reproach,  and  knows 
that  his  will  isjngher  and  more  excellent  than  all 
actual  and  all  possible  antagonists. 

Heroism  works  in  contradiction  to  the  voice  of 


HEROISM.  237 

mankind  and  in  contradiction,  for  a  time,  to  the 
voice  of  the  great  and  good.  Heroism  is  an  obedi 
ence  to  a  secret  impulse  of  an  individual's  charac 
ter.  Now  to  no  other  man  can  its  wisdom  appear 
as  it  does  to  him,  for  every  man  must  be  supposed 
to  see  a  little  farther  on  his  own  proper  path  than 
any  one  else.  Therefore  just  and  wise  men  take 
umbrage  at  his  act,  until  after  some  little  time  be 
past ;  then  they  see  it  to  be  in  unison  with  their 
acts.  All  prudent  men  see  that  the  action  is  clean 
contrary  to  a  sensual  prosperity ;  for  every  heroic 
act  measures  itself  by  its  contempt  of  some  external 
good.  But  it  finds  its  own  success  at  last,  and  then 
the  prudent  also  extol. 

Self-trust  is  the  essence  of  heroism.  It  is  the 
state  of  the  soul  at  war,  and  its  ultimate  objects  are 
the  last  defiance  of  falsehood  and  wrong,  and  the 
power  to  bear  all  that  can  be  inflicted  by  evil 
agents.  It  speaks  the  truth  and  it  is  just,  gener 
ous,  hospitable,  temperate,  scornful  of  petty  calcula 
tions  and  scornful  of  being  scorned.  It  persists  ;  it 
is  of  an  undaunted  boldness  and  of  a  fortitude  not  to 
be  wearied  out.  Its  jest  is  the  littleness  of  common 
life.  That  false  prudence  which  dotes  on  health 
and  wealth  is  the  butt  and  merriment  of  heroisnio 
Heroism,  like  Plotinus,  is  almost  ashamed  of  its 
body.  What  shall  it  say  then  to  the  sugar-plums 
and  cats'-cradles,  to  the  toilet  compliments,  quar- 


238  HEROISM. 

rels,  cards  and  custard,  which  rack  the  wit  of  all 
society  ?  What  joys  has  kind  nature  provided  for 
us  dear  creatures !  There  seems  to  be  no  interval 
between  greatness  and  meanness.  When  the  spirit 
is  not  master  of  the  world,  then  it  is  its  dupe. 
Yet  the  little  man  takes  the  great  hoax  so  inno 
cently,  works  in  it  so  headlong  and  believing,  is 
born  red,  and  dies  gray,  arranging  his  toilet,  at 
tending  on  his  own  health,  laying  traps  for  sweet 
food  and  strong  wine,  setting  his  heart  on  a  horse 
or  a  rifle,  made  happy  with  a  little  gossip  or  a  lit 
tle  praise,  that  the  great  soul  cannot  choose  but 
laugh  at  such  earnest  nonsense.  "  Indeed,  these 
humble  considerations  make  me  out  of  love  with 
greatness.  What  a  disgrace  is  it  to  me  to  take 
note  how  many  pairs  of  silk  stockings  thou  hast, 
namely,  these  and  those  that  were  the  peach-col 
ored  ones ;  or  to  bear  the  inventory  of  thy  shirts, 
as  one  for  superfluity,  and  one  other  for  use  !  " 

Citizens,  thinking  after  the  laws  of  arithmetic, 
consider  the  inconvenience  of  receiving  strangers 
at  their  fireside,  reckon  narrowly  the  loss  of  time 
and  the  unusual  display ;  the  soul  of  a  better  qual 
ity  thrusts  back  the  unseasonable  economy  into  the 
vaults  of  life,  and  says,  I  will  obey  the  God,  and 
the  sacrifice  and  the  fire  he  will  provide.  Ibn 
Hankal,  the  Arabian  geographer,  describes  a  heroic 
extreme  in  the  hospitality  of  Sogd,  in  Bukharia. 


HEROISM.  239 

u  When  I  was  in  Sogd  I  saw  a  great  building,  like 
a  palace,  the  gates  of  which  were  open  and  fixed 
back  to  the  wall  with  large  nails.  I  asked  the  rea 
son,  and  was  told  that  the  house  had  not  been  shut, 
night  or  day,  for  a  hundred  years.  Strangers  may 
present  themselves  at  any  hour  and  in  whatever 
number ;  the  master  has  amply  provided  for  the  re 
ception  of  the  men  and  their  animals  and  is  never 
happier  than  when  they  tarry  for  some  time. 
Nothing  of  the  kind  have  I  seen  in  any  other  coun 
try."  The  magnanimous  know  very  well  that  they 
who  give  time,  or  money,  or  shelter,  to  the  stran 
ger,  —  so  it  be  done  for  love  and  not  for  ostenta 
tion,  —  do,  as  it  were,  put  God  under  obligation  to 
them,  so  perfect  are  the  compensations  of  the  uni 
verse.  In  some  way  the  time  they  seem  to  lose  is 
redeemed  and  the  pains  they  seem  to  take  rernuner* 
ate  themselves.  These  men  fan  the  flame  of  human 
love  and  raise  the  standard  of  civil  virtue  among 
mankind.  But  hospitality  must  be  for  service  and 
not  for  show,  or  it  pulls  down  the  host.  The  brave 
soul  rates  itself  too  high  to  value  itself  by  the 
splendor  of  its  table  and  draperies.  It  gives  wha/ 
it  hath,  and  all  it  hath,  but  its  own  majesty  can 
lend  a  better  grace  to  bannocks  and  fair  water  thai, 
belong  to  city  feasts. 

The  temperance  of  the  hero  proceeds  from  the 
same  wish  to  do  no  dishonor  to  the  worthiness  he 


240  HEROISM. 

has.  But  he  loves  it  for  its  elegancy,  not  for  its 
austerity.  It  seems  not  worth  his  while  to  be  sol 
emn  and  denounce  with  bitterness  flesh-eating  or 
wine  -  drinking,  the  use  of  tobacco,  or  opium,  or 
tea,  or  silk,  or  gold.  A  great  man  scarcely  knows 
how  he  dines,  how  he  dresses  ;  but  without  railing 
or  precision  his  living  is  natural  and  poetic.  John 
Eliot,  the  Indian  Apostle,  drank  water,  and  said  of 
wine,  — "  It  is  a  noble,  generous  liquor  and  we 
should  be  humbly  thankful  for  it,  but,  as  I  remem 
ber,  water  was  made  before  it."  Better  still  is  the 
temperance  of  King  David,  who  poured  out  on  the 
ground  unto  the  Lord  the  water  which  three  of  his 
warriors  had  brought  him  to  drink,  at  the  peril  of 
their  lives. 

It  is  told  of  Brutus,  that  when  he  fell  on  his 
sword  after  the  battle  of  Philippi,  he  quoted  a  line 
of  Euripides,  —  "  O  Virtue  !  I  have  followed  thee 
through  life,  and  I  find  thee  at  last  but  a  shade." 
I  doubt  not  the  hero  is  slandered  by  this  report. 
The  heroic  soul  does  not  sell  its  justice  and  its 
nobleness.  It  does  not  ask  to  dine  nicely  and  to 
sleep  warm.  The  essence  of  greatness  is  the  per 
ception  that  virtue  is  enough.  Poverty  is  its  orna 
ment.  It  does  not  need  plenty,  and  can  very  well 
abide  its  loss. 

But  that  which  takes  my  fancy  most  in  the  he 
roic  class,  is  the  good-humor  and  hilarity  they  ex- 


HEROISM.  241 

hibit.  It  is  a  height  to  which  common  duty  can 
very  well  attain,  to  suffer  and  to  dare  with  solem 
nity.  But  these  rare  souls  set  opinion,  success, 
and  life  at  so  cheap  a  rate  that  they  will  not 
soothe  their  enemies  by  petitions,  or  the  show  of 
sorrow,  but  wear  their  own  habitual  greatness. 
Scipio,  charged  with  peculation,  refuses  to  do  him 
self  so  great  a  disgrace  as  to  wait  for  justification, 
though  he  had  the  scroll  of  his  accounts  in  his 
hands,  but  tears  it  to  pieces  before  the  tribunes. 
Socrates's  condemnation  of  himself  to  be  main 
tained  in  all  honor  in  the  Prytaneum,  during  his 
life,  and  Sir  Thomas  More's  playfulness  at  the 
scaffold,  are  of  the  same  strain.  In  Beaumont  and 
Fletcher's  "Sea  Voyage,"  Juletta  tells  the  stout 
captain  and  his  company,  — 

Jul.     Why,  slaves,  't  is  in  our  power  to  hang  ye. 
Master.  Very  likely, 

'Tis  in  our  powers,  then,  to  be  hanged,  and  scorn  ye. 

These  replies  are  sound  and  whole.  Sport  is  the 
bloom  and  glow  of  a  perfect  health.  The  great 
will  not  condescend  to  take  any  thing  seriously  ;  all 
must  be  as  gay  as  the  song  of  a  canary,  though  it 
were  the  building  of  cities  or  the  eradication  of  old 
and  foolish  churches  and  nations  which  have  cum 
bered  the  earth  long  thousands  of  years.  Simple 
hearts  put  all  the  history  and  customs  of  this  world 
behind  them,  and  play  their  own  game  in  innocent 


VOL.   IL 


242  HEROISM. 

defiance  of  the  Blue-Laws  of  the  world ,-  and  such 
would  appear,  could  we  see  the  human  race  assem 
bled  in  vision,  like  little  children  frolicking  to 
gether,  though  to  the  eyes  of  mankind  at  large 
they  wear  a  stately  and  solemn  garb  of  works  and 
influences. 

The  interest  these  fine  stories  have  for  us,  the 
power  of  a  romance  over  the  boy  who  grasps  the 
forbidden  book  under  his  bench  at  school,  our  de 
light  in  the  hero,  is  the  main  fact  to  our  purpose. 
All  these  great  and  transcendent  properties  are 
ours.  If  we  dilate  in  beholding  the  Greek  energy, 
the  Roman  pride,  it  is  that  we  are  already  domesti 
cating  the  same  sentiment.  Let  us  find  room  for 
this  great  guest  in  our  small  houses.  The  first 
step  of  worthiness  will  be  to  disabuse  us  of  our  su 
perstitious  associations  with  places  and  times,  with 
number  and  size.  Why  should  these  words,  Athe 
nian,  Roman,  Asia  and  England,  so  tingle  in  the 
ear?  Where  the  heart  is,  there  the  muses,  there 
the  gods  sojourn,  and  not  in  any  geography  of 
fame.  Massachusetts,  Connecticut  River  and  Bos 
ton  Bay  you  think  paltry  places,  and  the  ear  loves 
names  of  foreign  and  classic  topography.  But 
here  we  are ;  and,  if  we  will  tarry  a  little,  we  may 
come  to  learn  that  here  is  best.  See  to  it  only  that 
thyself  is  here,  and  art  and  nature,  hope  and  fate, 
friends,  angels  and  the  Supreme  Being  shall  not  be 


HEROISM.  •  243 

absent  from  the  chamber  where  thou  sittest.  Epam- 
inondas,  brave  and  affectionate,  does  not  seem  to 
us  to  need  Olympus  to  die  upon,  nor  the  Syrian 
sunshine.  He  lies  very  well  where  he  is.  The 
Jerseys  were  handsome  ground  enough  for  Washing 
ton  to  tread,  and  London  streets  for  the  feet  of  Mil 
ton.  A  great  man  makes  his  climate  genial  in  the 
imagination  of  men,  and  its  air  the  beloved  element 
of  all  delicate  spirits.  That  country  is  the  fairest 
which  is  inhabited  by  the  noblest  minds.  The 
pictures  which  fill  the  imagination  in  reading  the 
actions  of  Pericles,  Xenophon,  Columbus,  Bayard, 
Sidney,  Hampden,  teach  us  how  needlessly  mean 
our  life  is  :  that  we,  by  the  depth  of  our  living, 
should  deck  it  with  more  than  regal  or  national 
splendor,  and  act  on  principles  that  should  interest 
man  and  nature  in  the  length  of  our  days. 

We  have  seen  or  heard  of  many  extraordinary 
young  men  who  never  ripened,  or  whose  perform 
ance  in  actual  life  was  not  extraordinary.  When 
we  see  their  air  and  mien,  when  we  hear  them 
speak  of  society,  of  books,  of  religion,  we  admire 
their  superiority  ;  they  seem  to  throw  contempt  on 
our  entire  polity  and  social  state  ;  theirs  is  the  tone 
of  a  youthful  giant  who  is  sent  to  work  revolutions. 
But  they  enter  an  active  profession  and  the  forming 
Colossus  shrinks  to  the  common  size  of  man.  The 
magic  they  used  was  the  ideal  tendencies,  which  al- 


244  HEROISM. 

ways  make  the  Actual  ridiculous ;  "but  the  tough 
World  had  its  revenge  the  moment  they  put  their 
horses  of  the  sun  to  plough  in  its  furrow.  They 
found  no  example  and  no  companion,  and  their 
heart  fainted.  What  then?  The  lesson  they  gave 
in  their  first  aspirations  is  yet  true  ;  and  a  better 
valor  and  a  purer  truth  shall  one  day  organize 
their  belief.  Or  why  should  a  woman  liken  her 
self  to  any  historical  woman,  and  think,  because 
Sappho,  or  Sevigne*,  or  De  Stael,  or  the  cloistered 
souls  who  have  had  genius  and  cultivation  do  not 
satisfy  the  imagination  and  the  serene  Themis,  none 
can,  —  certainly  not  she  ?  Why  not  ?  She  has  a 
new  and  unattempted  problem  to  solve,  perchance 
that  of  the  happiest  nature  that  ever  bloomed. 
Let  the  maiden,  with  erect  soul,  walk  serenely  on 
her  way,  accept  the  hint  of  each  new  experience, 
search  in  turn  all  the  objects  that  solicit  her  eye, 
that  she  may  learn  the  power  and  the  charm  of  her 
new-born  being,  which  is  the  kindling  of  a  new 
dawn  in  the  recesses  of  space.  The  fair  girl  who 
repels  interference  by  a  decided  and  proud  choice 
of  influences,  so  careless  of  pleasing,  so  wilful  and 
lofty,  inspires  every  beholder  with  somewhat  of  her 
own  nobleness.  The  silent  heart  encourages  her ,- 
O  friend,  never  strike  sail  to  a  fear !  Come  into 
port  greatly,  or  sail  with  God  the  seas.  Not  in 
vain  you  live,  for  every  passing  eye  is  cheered  and 
refined  by  oie  vision. 


HEROISM.  245 

The  characteristic  of  heroism  is  its  persistency. 
All  men  have  wandering  impulses,  fits  and  starts 
of  generosity.  But  when  you  have  chosen  your 
part,  abide  by  it,  and  do  not  weakly  try  to  reconcile 
yourself  with  the  world.  The  heroic  cannot  be  the 
common,  nor  the  common  the  heroic.  Yet  we  have 
the  weakness  to  expect  the  sympathy  of  people  in 
those  actions  whose  excellence  is  that  they  outrun 
sympathy  and  appeal  to  a  tardy  justice.  If  you 
would  serve  your  brother,  because  it  is  fit  for  you 
to  serve  him,  do  not  take  back  your  words  when 
you  find  that  prudent  people  do  not  commend  you. 
Adhere  to  your  own  act,  and  congratulate  yourself 
if  you  have  done  something  strange  and  extrava 
gant  and  broken  the  monotony  of  a  decorous  age. 
It  was  a  high  counsel  that  I  once  heard  given  to  a 
young  person,  —  "  Always  do  what  you  are  afraid 
to  do."  A  simple  manly  character  need  never 
make  an  apology,  but  should  regard  its  past  action 
with  the  calmness  of  Phocion,  when  he  admitted 
that  the  event  of  the  battle  was  happy,  yet  did  not 
regret  his  dissuasion  from  the  battle. 

There  is  no  weakness  or  exposure  for  which  we 
cannot  find  consolation  in  the  thought  —  this  is  a 
part  of  my  constitution,  part  of  my  relation  and  of 
fice  to  my  fellow-creature.  Has  nature  convenanted 
with  me  that  I  should  never  appear  to  disadvan 
tage,  never  make  a  ridiculous  figure?  Let  us  be 


246  HEROISM. 

generous  of  our  dignity  as  well  as  of  our  money. 
Greatness  once  and  for  ever  has  done  with  opinion. 
We  tell  our  charities,  not  because  we  wish  to  be 
praised  for  them,  not  because  we  think  they  have 
great  merit,  but  for  our  justification.  It  is  a  capi 
tal  blunder  ;  as  you  discover  when  another  man  re 
cites  his  charities. 

To  speak  the  truth,  even  with  some  austerity,  to 
live  with  some  rigor  of  temperance,  or  some  ex 
tremes  of  generosity,  seems  to  be  an  asceticism 
which  common  good-nature  would  appoint  to  those 
who  are  at  ease  and  in  plenty,  in  sign  that  they 
feel  a  brotherhood  with  the  great  multitude  of  suf 
fering  men.  And  not  only  need  we  breathe  and 
exercise  the  soul  by  assuming  the  penalties  of  absti 
nence,  of  debt,  of  solitude,  of  unpopularity, —  but 
it  behooves  the  wise  man  to  look  with  a  bold  eye 
into  those  rarer  dangers  which  sometimes  invade 
men,  and  to  familiarize  himself  with  disgusting 
forms  of  disease,  with  sounds  of  execration,  and 
the  vision  of  violent  death. 

Times  of  heroism  are  generally  times  of  terror, 
but  the  day  never  shines  in  which  this  element  may 
not  work.  The  circumstances  of  man,  we  say,  are 
historically  somewhat  better  in  this  country  and  at 
this  hour  than  perhaps  ever  before.  More  freedom 
exists  for  culture.  It  will  not  now  run  against  an 
axe  at  the  first  step  out  of  the  beaten  track  of  opin. 


HEROISM.  247 

ion.  But  whoso  is  heroic  will  always  find  crises 
to  try  his  edge.  Human  virtue  demands  her  cham 
pions  and  martyrs,  and  the  trial  of  persecution  al 
ways  proceeds.  It  is  but  the  other  day  that  the 
brave  Lovejoy  gave  his  breast  to  the  bullets  of  a 
mob,  for  the  rights  of  free  speech  and  opinion,  and 
died  when  it  was  better  not  to  live. 

I  see  not  any  road  of  perfect  peace  which  a  man 
can  walk,  but  after  the  counsel  of  his  own  bosom. 
Let  him  quit  too  much  association,  let  him  go  home 
much,  and  stablish  himself  in  those  courses  he  ap 
proves.  The  unremitting  retention  of  simple  and 
high  sentiments  in  obscure  duties  is  hardening  the 
character  to  that  temper  which  will  work  with 
honor,  if  need  be  in  the  tumult,  or  on  the  scaffold. 
Whatever  outrages  have  happened  to  men  may  be 
fall  a  man  again  ;  and  very  easily  in  a  republic,  if 
there  appear  any  signs  of  a  decay  of  religion. 
Coarse  slander,  fire,  tar  and  feathers  and  the  gib 
bet,  the  youth  may  freely  bring  home  to  his  mind 
and  with  what  sweetness  of  temper  he  can,  and  in 
quire  how  fast  he  can  fix  his  sense  of  duty,  braving 
such  penalties,  whenever  it  may  please  the  next 
newspaper  and  a  sufficient  number  of  his  neighbors 
to  pronounce  his  opinions  incendiary. 

It  may  calm  the  apprehension  of  calamity  in  the 
most  susceptible  heart  to  see  how  quick  a  bound 
Nature  has  set  to  the  utmost  infliction  of  malice. 


248  HEROISM. 

We  rapidly  approach  a  brink  over  which  no  enemy 
can  follow  us :  — 

"  Let  them  rave  : 
Thou  art  quiet  in  thy  grave." 

In  the  gloom  of  our  ignorance  of  what  shall  be,  in 
the  hour  when  we  are  deaf  to  the  higher  voices, 
who  does  not  envy  those  who  have  seen  safely  to 
an  end  their  manful  endeavor  ?  Who  that  sees  the 
meanness  of  our  politics  but  inly  congratulates 
Washington  that  he  is  long  already  wrapped  in  his 
shroud,  and  for  ever  safe  ;  that  he  was  laid  sweet 
in  his  grave,  the  hope  of  humanity  not  yet  subju 
gated  in  him  ?  Who  does  not  sometimes  envy  the 
good  and  brave  who  are  no  more  to  suffer  from  the 
tumults  of  the  natural  world,  and  await  with  curi 
ous  complacency  the  speedy  term  of  his  own  con 
versation  with  finite  nature?  And  yet  the  love 
that  will  be  annihilated  sooner  than  treacherous 
has  already  made  death  impossible,  and  affirms  it 
self  no  mortal  but  a  native  of  the  deeps  of  absolute 
and  inextinguishable  being. 


THE  OVER-SOUL. 


BUT  souls  that  of  his  own  good  life  partake, 
He  loves  as  his  own  self  ;  dear  as  his  eye 
They  are  to  Him  :  He  '11  never  them  forsake  : 
When  they  shall  die,  then  God  himself  shall  die ; 
They  live,  they  live  in  blest  eternity." 

Henry  More, 

Space  is  ample,  east  and  west, 

But  two  cannot  go  abreast, 

Cannot  travel  in  it  two  : 

Yonder  masterful  cuckoo 

Crowds  every  egg  out  of  the  nest, 

Quick  or  dead,  except  its  own ; 

A  spell  is  laid  on  sod  and  stone, 

Night  and  Day  Ve  been  tampered  with, 

Every  quality  and  pith 

Surcharged  and  sultry  with  a  power 

That  works  its  will  on  age  and  hour. 


IX. 

THE  OVER-SOUL. 


THERE  is  a  difference  between  one  and  another 
hour  of  life  in  their  authority  and  subsequent  effect. 
Our  faith  comes  in  moments  ;  our  vice  is  habitual. 
Yet  there  is  a  depth  in  those  brief  moments  which 
constrains  us  to  ascribe  more  reality  to  them  than 
to  all  other  experiences.  For  this  reason  the  argu 
ment  which  is  always  forthcoming  to  silence  those 
who  conceive  extraordinary  hopes  of  man,  namely 
the  appeal  to  experience,  is  for  ever  invalid  and 
vain.  We  give  up  the  past  to  the  objector,  and 
yet  we  hope*.  He  must  explain  this  hope.  We 
grant  that  human  life  is  mean,  but  how  did  we  find 
out  that  it  was  mean  ?  What  is  the  ground  of  this 
uneasiness  of  ours  ;  of  this  old  discontent  ?  What 
is  the  universal  sense  of  want  and  ignorance,  but 
the  fine  innuendo  by  which  the  soul  makes  its  enor 
mous  claim  ?  Why  do  men  feel  that  the  natura) 
history  of  man  has  never  been  written,  but  he  is  al 
ways  leaving  behind  what  you  have  said  of  him,  and 
it  becomes  old,  and  books  of  metaphysics  worthless  ? 


252  THE  OVER- SOUL. 

The  philosophy  of  six  thousand  years  has  not 
searched  the  chambers  and  magazines  of  the  soul. 
In  its  experiments  there  has  always  remained,  in 
the  last  analysis,  a  residuum  it  could  not  resolve. 
Man  is  a  stream  whose  source  is  hidden.  Our  being 
is  descending  into  us  from  we  know  not  whence. 
The  most  exact  calculator  has  no  prescience  that 
somewhat  incalculable  may  not  balk  the  very  next 
moment.  I  am  constrained  every  moment  to  ac 
knowledge  a  higher  origin  for  events  than  the  will 
I  call  mine. 

As  with  events,  so  is  it  with  thoughts.  When  I 
watch  that  flowing  river,  which,  out  of  regions  I  see 
not,  pours  for  a  season  its  streams  into  me,  I  see 
that  I  am  a  pensioner  ;  not  a  cause  but  a  surprised 
spectator  of  this  ethereal  water ;  that  I  desire  and 
look  up  and  put  myself  in  the  attitude  of  reception, 
but  from  some  alien  energy  the  visions  come. 

The  Supreme  Critic  on  the  errors  of  the  past  and 
the  present,  and  the  only  prophet  of  that  which 
must  be,  is  that  great  nature  in  which  we  rest  as 
the  earth  lies  in  the  soft  arms  of  the  atmosphere ; 
;that  Unity,  that  Over-soul,  within  which  every  man's 
particular  being  is  contained  and  made  one  with 
all  other ;  that  common  heart  of  which  all  sincere 
conversation  is  the  worship,  to  which  all  right  action 
is  submission  ;  that  overpowering  reality  which  con 
futes  our  tricks  and  talents,  and  constrains  every 


THE   OVER-SOUL.  253 

one  to  pass  for  what  he  is,  and  to  speak  from  his 
character  and  not  from  his  tongue,  and  which  ever 
more  tends  to  pass  into  our  thought  and  hand  and 
become  wisdom  and  virtue  and  power  and  beauty . 
We  live  in  succession,  in  division,  in  parts,  in 
particles.  Meantime  within  man  is  the  soul  of  the 
whole  ;  the  wise  silence  ;  the  universal  beauty,  to 
which  every  part  and  particle  is  equally  related ; 
the  eternal  ONE.  And  this  deep  power  in  which 
we  exist  and  whose  beatitude  is  all  accessible  to  us, 
is  not  only  self-sufficing  and  perfect  in  every  hour, 
but  the  act  of  seeing  and  the  thing  seen,  the  seer 
and  the  spectacle,  the  subject  and  the  object,  are 
one.  We  see  the  world  piece  by  piece,  as  the  sun, 
the  moon,  the  animal,  the  tree ;  but  the  whole,  of 
which  these  are  the  shining  parts,  is  the  soul.  Only 
by  the  vision  of  that  Wisdom  can  the  horoscope  of 
the  ages  be  read,  and  by  falling  back  on  our  better 
thoughts,  by  yielding  to  the  spirit  of  prophecy 
which  is  innate  in  every  man,  we  can  know  what  it 
saith.  Every  man's  words  who  speaks  from  that 
life  must  sound  vain  to  those  who  do  not  dwell  in 
the  same  thought  on  their  own  part.  I  dare  not 
speak  for  it.  My  words  do  not  carry  its  august 
sense  ;  they  fall  short  and  cold.  Only  itself  can  in 
spire  whom  it  will,  and  behold !  their  speech  shall 
be  lyrical,  and  sweet,  and  universal  as  the  rising  oi 
the  wind.  Yet  I  desire,  even  by  profane  words,  i| 


25 i  THE  OVER-SOUL. 

I  may  not  use  sacred,  to  indicate  the  heaven  of  this 
deity  and  to  report  what  hints  I  have  collected  of 
the  transcendent  simplicity  and  energy  of  the  High 
est  Law. 

If  we  consider  what  happens  in  conversation,  in 
reveries,  in  remorse,  in  times  of  passion,  in  surprises, 
in  the  instructions  of  dreams,  wherein  often  we  see 
ourselves  in  masquerade,  —  the  droll  disguises  only 
magnifying  and  enhancing  a  real  element  and 
forcing  it  on  our  distant  notice,  —  we  shall  catch 
many  hints  that  will  broaden  and  lighten  into  knowl 
edge  of  the  secret  of  nature.  All  goes  to  show  that 
the  soul  in  man  is  not  an  organ,  but  animates  and 
exercises  all  the  organs  ;  is  not  a  function,  like  the 
power  of  memory,  of  calculation,  of  comparison,  but 
uses  these  as  hands  and  feet ;  is  not  a  faculty,  but  a 
light ;  is  not  the  intellect  or  the  will,  but  the  master 
of  the  intellect  and  the  will ;  is  the  background  of  our 
being,  in  which  they  lie,  —  an  immensity  not  pos 
sessed  and  that  cannot  be  possessed.  From  within  or 
from  behind,  a  light  shines  through  us  upon  things 
and  makes  us  aware  that  we  are  nothing,  but  the  light 
is  all.  A  man  is  the  facade  of  a  temple  wherein  all 
wisdom  and  all  good  abide.  What  we  commonly 
call  man,  the  eating,  drinking,  planting,  counting 
man,  does  not,  as  we  know  him,  represent  himself, 
but  misrepresents  himself.  Him  we  do  not  re 
spect,  but  the  soul,  whose  organ  he  is,  would  he  let 


THE   OVER-SOUL.  255 

it  appear  through  his  action,  would  make  our  knees 
bend.  When  it  breathes  through  his  intellect,  it  is 
genius ;  when  it  breathes  through  his  will,  it  is  vir 
tue  ;  when  it  flows  through  his  affection,  it  is  love. 
And  the  blindness  of  the  intellect  begins  when  it 
would  be  something  of  itself.  The  weakness  of  the 
will  begins  when  the  individual  would  be  something 
of  himself.  All  reform  aims  in  some  one  particular 
to  let  the  soul  have  its  way  through  us ;  in  other 
words,  to  engage  us  to  obey. 

Of  this  pure  nature  every  man  is  at  some  time 
sensible.  Language  cannot  paint  it  with  his  colors. 
It  is  too  subtile.  It  is  undefinable,  unmeasurable  ; 
but  we  know  that  it  prevades  and  contains  us.  We 
know  that  all  spiritual  being  is  in  man.  A  wise  old 
proverb  says,  "  God  comes  to  see  us  without  bell ;  " 
that  is,  as  there  is  no  screen  or  ceiling  between  our 
heads  and  the  infinite  heavens,  so  is  there  no  bar  or 
wall  in  the  soul,  where  man,  the  effect,  ceases,  and 
God,  the  cause,  begins.  The  walls  are  taken  away. 
We  lie  open  on  one  side  to  the  deeps  of  spiritual 
nature,  to  the  attributes  of  God.  Justice  we  see 
and  know,  Love,  Freedom,  Power.  These  natures 
Uo  man  ever  got  above,  but  they  tower  over  us,  and 
most  in  the  moment  when  our  interests  tempt  us  to 
wound  them. 

The  sovereignty  of  this  nature  whereof  we  speak 
is  made  known  by  its  independency  of  those  limita* 


256  THE   OVER-SOUL. 

tions  which  circumscribe  us  on  every  hand.  The 
soul  circumscribes  all  things.  As  1  have  said, 
it  contradicts  all  experience.  In  like  manner  it 
abolishes  time  and  space.  The  influence  of  the 
senses  has  in  most  men  overpowered  the  mind  to 
that  degree  that  the  walls  of  time  and  space  haw 
come  to  look  real  and  insurmountable ;  and  to  speak 
with  levity  of  these  limits  is,  in  the  world,  the  sign 
of  insanity.  Yet  time  and  space  are  but  inverse 
measures  of  the  force  of  the  soul.  The  spirit  sports 
with  time,  — 

"  Can  crowd  eternity  into  an  hour, 
Or  stretch  an  hour  to  eternity." 

We  are  often  made  to  feel  that  there  is  another 
youth  and  age  than  that  which  is  measured  from 
the  year  of  our  natural  birth.  Some  thoughts  al 
ways  find  us  young,  and  keep  us  so.  Such  a  thought 
is  the  love  of  the  universal  and  eternal  beauty. 
Every  man  parts  from  that  contemplation  with  the 
feeling  that  it  rather  belongs  to  ages  than  to  mortal 
life.  The  least  activity  of  the  intellectual  powers 
redeems  us  in  a  degree  from  the  conditions  of  time. 
In  sickness,  in  languor,  give  us  a  strain  of  poetry 
or  a  profound  sentence,  and  we  are  refreshed ;  or 
produce  a  volume  of  Plato  or  Shakspeare,  or  re 
mind  us  of  their  names,  and  instantly  we  come  into 
a  feeling  of  longevity.  See  how  the  deep  divine 
thought  reduces  centuries  and  millenniums,  and 


THE  OVER-SOUL.  257 

makes  itself  present  through  all  ages.  Is  the  teach 
ing  of  Christ  less  effective  now  than  it  was  when 
first  his  mouth  was  opened  ?  The  emphasis  of  facts 
and  persons  in  my  thought  has  nothing  to  do  with 
time.  And  so  always  the  soul's  scale  is  one,  the 
scale  of  the  senses  and  the  understanding  is  another,, 
Before  the  revelations  of  the  soul,  Time,  Space  and 
Nature  shrink  away.  In  common  speech  we  refer 
all  things  to  time,  as  we  habitually  refer  the  im 
mensely  sundered  stars  to  one  concave  sphere.  And 
so  we  say  that  the  Judgment  is  distant  or  near,  that 
the  Millennium  approaches,  that  a  day  of  certain 
political,  moral,  social  reforms  is  at  hand,  and  the 
like,  when  we  mean  that  in  the  nature  of  things  one 
of  the  facts  we  contemplate  is  external  and  fugitive, 
and  the  other  is  permanent  and  connate  with  the 
soul.  The  things  we  now  esteem  fixed  shall,  one 
by  one,  detach  themselves  like  ripe  fruit  from  our 
experience,  and  fall.  The  wind  shall  blow  them 
none  knows  whither.  The  landscape,  the  figures, 
Boston,  London,  are  facts  as  fugitive  as  any  institu 
tion  past,  or  any  whiff  of  mist  or  smoke,  and  so  is 
society,  and  so  is  the  world.  The  soul  looketh 
steadily  forwards,  creating  a  world  before  her,  leav 
ing  worlds  behind  her.  She  has  no  dates,  nor  rites, 
nor  persons,  nor  specialties  nor  men.  The  soul 
knows  only  the  soul ;  the  web  of  events  is  the  flow* 
ing  robe  in  which  she  is  clothed. 

VOL.   II.  17 


258  THE   OVER-SOUL. 

After  its  own  law  and  not  by  arithmetic  is  the 
rate  of  its  progress  to  be  computed.  The  soul's 
advances  are  not  made  by  gradation,  such  as  can 
be  represented  by  motion  in  a  straight  line,  but 
rather  by  ascension  of  state,  such  as  can  be  repre 
sented  by  metamorphosis,  —  from  the  egg  to  the 
worm,  from  the  worm  to  the  fly.  The  growths  of 
genius  are  of  a  certain  total  character,  that  does 
not  advance  the  elect  individual  first  over  John, 
then  Adam,  then  Richard,  and  give  to  each  the 
pain  of  discovered  inferiority,  —  but  by  every  throe 
of  growth  the  man  expands  there  where  he  works, 
passing,  at  each  pulsation,  classes,  populations,  of 
men.  With  each  divine  impulse  the  mind  rends 
the  thin  rinds  of  the  visible  and  finite,  and  comes 
out  into  eternity,  and  inspires  and  expires  its  air. 
It  converses  with  truths  that  have  always  been 
spoken  in  the  world,  and  becomes  conscious  of  a 
closer  sympathy  with  Zeno  and  Arrian  than  with 
persons  in  the  house. 

This  is  the  law  of  moral  and  of  mental  gain. 
The  simple  rise  as  by  specific  levity  not  into  a  par 
ticular  virtue,  but  into  the  region  of  all  the  virtues. 
They  are  in  the  spirit  which  contains  them  all. 
The  soul  requires  purity,  but  purity  is  not  it ;  re 
quires  justice,  but  justice  is  not  that ;  requires  be^ 
aeficence,  but  is  somewhat  better ;  so  that  there  ia 
a  kind  of  descent  and  accommodation  felt  when  we 


THE   OVER-SOUL.  259 

feave  speaking  of  moral  nature  to  urge  a  virtue 
which  it  enjoins.  To  the  well-born  child  all  the  vir 
tues  are  natural,  and  not  painfully  acquired.  Speak 
to  his  heart,  and  the  man  becomes  suddenly  virtuous,. 

Within  the  same  sentiment  is  the  germ  of  intel 
lectual  growth,  which  obeys  the  same  law.  Those 
who  are  capable  of  humility,  of  justice,  of  love,  of 
aspiration,  stand  already  on  a  platform  that  com 
mands  the  sciences  and  arts,  speech  and  poetry,  ac* 
tion  and  grace.  For  whoso  dwells  in  this  moral 
beatitude  already  anticipates  those  special  powers 
which  men  prize  so  highly.  The  lover  has  no  tal 
ent,  no  skill,  which  passes  for  quite  nothing  with 
his  enamored  maiden,  however  little  she  may  pos 
sess  of  related  faculty ;  and  the  heart  which  aban 
dons  itself  to  the  Supreme  Mind  finds  itself  related 
to  all  its  works,  and  will  travel  a  royal  road  to  par 
ticular  knowledges  and  powers.  In  ascending  to 
this  primary  and  aboriginal  sentiment  we  have 
come  from  our  remote  station  on  the  circumference 
instantaneously  to  the  centre  of  the  world,  where, 
as  in  the  closet  of  God,  we  see  causes,  and  antici 
pate  the  universe,  which  is  but  a  slow  effect. 

One  mode  of  the  divine  teaching  is  the  incarna 
tion  of  the  spirit  in  a  form,  —  in  forms,  like  my 
own.  I  live  in  society,  with  persons  who  answer 
to  thoughts  in  my  own  mind,  or  express  a  certain 
obedience  to  the  great  instincts  to  which  I  live.  I 


260  THE   OVER-SOUL. 

see  its  presence  to  them.  I  am  certified  of  a  com« 
mon  nature  ;  and  these  other  souls,  these  separated 
selves,  draw  me  as  nothing  else  can.  They  stir  in 
me  the  new  emotions  we  call  passion  ;  of  love,  ha 
tred,  fear,  admiration,  pity  ;  thence  come  conver 
sation,  competition,  persuasion,  cities  and  war. 
Persons  are  supplementary  to  the  primary  teaching 
of  the  soul.  In  youth  we  are  mad  for  persons. 
Childhood  and  youth  see  all  the  world  in  them. 
But  the  larger  experience  of  man  discovers  the 
identical  nature  appearing  through  them  all.  Per 
sons  themselves  acquaint  us  with  the  impersonal. 
In  all  conversation  between  two  persons  tacit  ref 
erence  is  made,  as  to  a  third  party,  to  a  common 
nature.  That  third  party  or  common  nature  is  not 
social ;  it  is  impersonal ;  is  God.  And  so  in  groups 
where  debate  is  earnest,  and  especially  on  high 
questions,  the  company  become  aware  that  the 
thought  rises  to  an  equal  level  in  all  bosoms,  that 
all  have  a  spiritual  property  in  what  was  said,  as 
well  as  the  sayer.  They  all  become  wiser  than  they 
were.  It  arches  over  them  like  a  temple,  this  unity 
of  thought  in  which  every  heart  beats  with  nobler 
sense  of  power  and  duty,  and  thinks  and  acts  with 
unusual  solemnity.  All  are  conscious  of  attaining 
to  a  higher  self-possession.  It  shines  for  all.  There 
is  a  certain  wisdom  of  humanity  which  is  common 
to  the  greatest  men  with  the  lowest,  and  which  our 


THE   OVER-SOUL.  261 

ordinary  education  often  labors  to  silence  and  ob 
struct.  The  mind  is  one,  and  the  best  minds,  who 
love  truth  for  its  own  sake,  think  much  less  of 
property  in  truth.  They  accept  it  thankfully  every 
where,  and  do  not  label  or  stamp  it  with  any  man's 
name,  for  it  is  theirs  long  beforehand,  and  from 
eternity.  The  learned  and  the  studious  of  thought 
have  no  monopoly  of  wisdom.  Their  violence  of 
direction  in  some  degree  disqualifies  them  to  think 
truly.  We  owe  many  valuable  observations  to  peo 
ple  who  are  not  very  acute  or  profound,  and  who 
say  the  thing  without  effort  which  we  want  and 
have  long  been  hunting  in  vain.  The  action  of  the 
soul  is  oftener  in  that  which  is  felt  and  left  unsaid 
than  in  that  which  is  said  in  any  conversation.  It 
broods  over  every  society,  and  they  unconsciously 
seek  for  it  in  each  other.  We  know  better  than 
we  do.  We  do  not  yet  possess  ourselves,  and  we 
know  at  the  same  time  that  we  are  much  more.  I 
feel  the  same  truth  how  often  in  my  trivial  conver 
sation  with  my  neighbors,  that  somewhat  higher  in 
each  of  us  overlooks  this  by-play,  and  Jove  nods  to 
Jove  from  behind  each  of  us. 

Men  descend  to  meet.  In  their  habitual  and 
mean  service  to  the  world,  for  which  they  forsake 
their  native  nobleness,  they  resemble  those  Arabian 
sheiks  who  dwell  in  mean  houses  and  affect  an  ex 
ternal  poverty,  to  escape  the  rapacity  of  the  Pacha, 


262  THE   OVER-SOUL. 

and  reserve  all  their  display  of  wealth  for  their  in=> 
terior  and  guarded  retirements. 

As  it  is  present  in  all  persons,  so  it  is  in  every 
period  of  life.  It  is  adult  already  in  the  infant 
man.  In  my  dealing  with  my  child,  my  Latin  and 
Greek,  my  accomplishments  and  my  money  stead 
me  nothing  ;  but  as  much  soul  as  I  have  avails.  If 
I  am  wilful,  he  sets  his  will  against  mine,  one  for 
one,  and  leaves  me,  if  I  please,  the  degradation  of 
beating  him  by  my  superiority  of  strength.  But  if 
I  renounce  my  will  and  act  for  the  soul,  setting 
that  up  as  umpire  between  us  two,  out  of  his 
young  eyes  looks  the  same  soul ;  he  reveres  and 
loves  with  me. 

The  soul  is  the  perceiver  and  revealer  of  truth. 
We  know  truth  when  we  see  it,  let  skeptic  and 
scoffer  say  what  they  choose.  Foolish  people  ask 
you,  when  you  have  spoken  what  they  do  not 
wish  to  hear,  4  How  do  you  know  it  is  truth,  and 
not  an  error  of  your  own  ?  '  We  know  truth 
when  we  see  it,  from  opinion,  as  we  know  when  we 
are  awake  that  we  are  awake.  It  was  a  grand  sen 
tence  of  Emanuel  Swedenborg,  which  would  alone 
indicate  the  greatness  of  that  man's  perception,  — • 
"  It  is  no  proof  of  a  man's  understanding  to  be  able 
to  affirm  whatever  he  pleases  ;  but  to  be  able  to  dis 
cern  that  what  is  true  is  true,  and  that  what  is 
false  is  false,  —  this  is  the  mark  and  character  of 


THE   OVER-SOUL.  283 

intelligence."  In  the  book  I  read,  the  good 
thought  returns  to  me,  as  every  truth  will,  the  im 
age  of  the  whole  soul.  To  the  bad  thought  which 
I  find  in  it,  the  same  soul  becomes  a  discerning,, 
separating  sword,  and  lops  it  away.  We  are  wiser 
than  we  know.  If  we  will  not  interfere  with  our 
thought,  but  will  act  entirely,  or  see  how  the  thing 
stands  in  God,  we  know  the  particular  thing,  and 
every  thing,  and  every  man.  For  the  Maker  of  all 
things  arid  all  persons  stands  behind  us  and  casts 
his  dread  omniscience  through  us  over  things. 

But  beyond  this  recognition  of  its  own  in  partic 
ular  passages  of  the  individual's  experience,  it  also 
reveals  truth.  And  here  we  should  seek  to  rein 
force  ourselves  by  its  very  presence,  and  to  speak 
with  a  worthier,  loftier  strain  of  that  advent.  For 
the  soul's  communication  of  truth  is  the  highest 
event  in  nature,  since  it  then  does  not  give  some 
what  from  itself,  but  it  gives  itself,  or  passes  into 
and  becomes  that  man  whom  it  enlightens  ;  or,  in 
proportion  to  that  truth  he  receives,  it  takes  him  to 
itself. 

We  distinguish  the  announcements  of  the  soul, 
its  manifestations  of  its  own  nature,  by  the  term 
Revelation.  These  are  always  attended  by  the 
emotion  of  the  sublime.  For  this  communication 
is  an  influx  of  the  Divine  mind  into  our  mind.  It 
is  an  ebb  of  the  individual  rivulet  before  the  flow 


264  THE   OVER-SOUL. 

ing  surges  of  the  sea  of  life.  Every  distinct  ap 
prehension  of  this  central  commandment  agitates 
men  with  awe  and  delight.  A  thrill  passes  through 
all  men  at  the  reception  of  new  truth,  or  at  the 
performance  of  a  great  action,  which  comes  out 
of  the  heart  of  nature.  In  these  communications 
the  power  to  see  is  not  separated  from  the  will  to 
do,  but  the  insight  proceeds  from  obedience,  and 
the  obedience  proceeds  from  a  joyful  perception. 
Every  moment  when  the  individual  feels  himself 
invaded  by  it  is  memorable.  By  the  necessity  of 
our  constitution  a  certain  enthusiasm  attends  the 
individual's  consciousness  of  that  divine  presence. 
The  character  and  duration  of  this  enthusiasm  vary 
with  the  state  of  the  individual,  from  an  ecstasy 
and  trance  and  prophetic  inspiration,  —  which  is 
its  rarer  appearance,  —  to  the  faintest  glow  of  vir 
tuous  emotion,  in  which  form  it  warms,  like  our 
household  fires,  all  the  families  and  associations  of 
men,  and  makes  society  possible.  A  certain  ten 
dency  to  insanity  has  always  attended  the  opening 
of  the  religious  sense  in  men,  as  if  they  had  been 
"blasted  with  excess  of  light."  The  trances  of 
Socrates,  the  "union"  of  Plotinus,  the  vision  of 
Porphyry,  the  conversion  of  Paul,  the  aurora  of 
Behmen,  the  convulsions  of  George  Fox  and  his 
Quakers,  the  illumination  of  Swedenborg,  are  of  this 
kind.  What  was  in  the  case  of  these  remarkable 


THE  OVER-SOUL.  265 

persons  a  ravishment,  has,  in  innumerable  in 
stances  in  common  life,  been  exhibited  in  less  strik 
ing  manner.  Everywhere  the  history  of  religion 
betrays  a  tendency  to  enthusiasm.  The  rapture  of 
the  Moravian  and  Quietist ;  the  opening  of  the 
eternal  sense  of  the  Word,  in  the  language  of  the 
New  Jerusalem  Church ;  the  revival  of  the  Calvin- 
istic  churches  ;  the  experiences  of  the  Methodists, 
are  varying  forms  of  that  shudder  of  awe  and  de 
light  with  which  the  individual  soul  always  mingles 
with  the  universal  soul. 

The  nature  of  these  revelations  is  the  same  ; 
they  are  perceptions  of  the  absolute  law.  They 
are  solutions  of  the  soul's  own  questions.  They  do 
not  answer  the  questions  which  the  understanding 
asks.  The  soul  answers  never  by  words,  but  by 
the  thing  itself  that  is  inquired  after. 

Revelation  is  the  disclosure  of  the  soul.  The 
popular  notion  of  a  revelation  is  that  it  is  a  telling 
of  fortunes.  In  past  oracles  of  the  soul  the  under 
standing  seeks  to  find  answers  to  sensual  questions, 
and  undertakes  to  tell  from  God  how  long  men 
shall  exist,  what  their  hands  shall  do  and  who  shall 
be  their  company,  adding  names  and  dates  and 
places.  But  we  must  pick  no  locks.  We  must 
check  this  low  curiosity.  An  answer  in  words  is 
delusive  ;  it  is  really  no  answer  to  the  questions  you 
ask.  Do  not  require  a  description  of  the  countries 


266  THE   OVER-SOUL. 

towards  which  you  sail.  The  description  does  not 
describe  them  to  you,  and  to-morrow  you  arrive 
there  and  know  them  by  inhabiting  them.  Men 
ask  concerning  the  immortality  of  the  soul,  the  em 
ployments  of  heaven,  the  state  of  the  sinner,  and  so 
forth.  They  even  dream  that  Jesus  has  left  replies 
to  precisely  these  interrogatories.  Never  a  moment 
did  that  sublime  spirit  speak  in  their  patois.  To 
truth,  justice,  love,  the  attributes  of  the  soul,  the 
idea  of  immutableness  is  essentially  associated. 
Jesus,  living  in  these  moral  sentiments,  heedless  of 
sensual  fortunes,  heeding  only  the  manifestations 
of  these,  never  made  the  separation  of  the  idea  of 
duration  from  the  essence  of  these  attributes,  nor 
uttered  a  syllable  concerning  the  duration  of  tho 
soul.  It  was  left  to  his  disciples  to  sever  duration 
from  the  moral  elements,  and  to  teach  the  immor< 
tality  of  the  soul  as  a  doctrine,  and  maintain  it  by 
evidences.  The  moment  the  doctrine  of  the  immor 
tality  is  separately  taught,  man  is  already  fallen. 
In  the  flowing  of  love,  in  the  adoration  of  humility, 
there  is  no  question  of  continuance.  No  inspired 
man  ever  asks  this  question  or  condescends  to  these 
evidences.  For  the  soul  is  true  to  itself,  and  the 
man  in  whom  it  is  shed  abroad  cannot  wander 
from  the  present,  which  is  infinite,  to  a  future 
which  would  be  finite. 

These  questions  which  we  lust  to  ask  about  tho 


THE   OVER-SOUL.  26? 

future  are  a  confession  of  sin.  God  has  no  answer 
for  them.  No  answer  in  words  can  reply  to  a  ques 
tion  of  things.  It  is  not  in  an  arbitrary  "  decree 
of  God,"  but  in  the  nature  of  man,  that  a  veil  shuts 
down  on  the  facts  of  to-morrow  ;  for  the  soul  will 
not  have  us  read  any  other  cipher  than  that  of 
cause  and  effect.  By  this  veil  which  curtains 
events  it  instructs  the  children  of  men  to  live  in 
to-day.  The  only  mode  of  obtaining  an  answer  to 
these  questions  of  the  senses  is  to  forego  all  low 
curiosity,  and,  accepting  the  tide  of  being  which 
floats  us  into  the  secret  of  nature,  work  and  live, 
work  and  live,  and  all  unawares  the  advancing  soul 
has  built  and  forged  for  itself  a  new  condition,  and 
the  question  and  the  answer  are  one. 

By  the  same  fire,  vital,  consecrating,  celestial, 
which  burns  until  it  shall  dissolve  all  things  into 
the  waves  and  surges  of  an  ocean  of  light,  we  see 
and  know  each  other,  and  what  spirit  each  is  of. 
Who  can  tell  the  grounds  of  his  knowledge  of  the 
character  of  the  several  individuals  in  his  circle  of 
friends  ?  No  man.  Yet  their  acts  and  words  do 
not  disappoint  him.  In  that  man,  though  he  knew 
no  ill  of  him,  he  put  no  trust.  In  that  other, 
though  they  had  seldom  met,  authentic  signs  had 
yet  passed,  to  signify  that  he  might  be  trusted  as 
one  who  had  an  interest  in  his  own  character.  We 
know  each  other  very  well,  —  which  of  us  has  been 


268  THE   OVER-SOUL. 

just  to  himself  and  whether  that  which  we  teach  01 
behold  is  only  an  aspiration  or  is  our  honest  effort 
also. 

We  are  all  discerners  of  spirits.  That  diagnosis 
lies  aloft  in  our  life  or  unconscious  power.  The  in 
tercourse  of  society,  its  trade,  its  religion,  its  friend- 
ships,  its  quarrels,  is  one  wide  judicial  investiga 
tion  of  character.  In  full  court,  or  in  small  com- 
mittee,  or  confronted  face  to  face,  accuser  and  ac 
cused,  men  offer  themselves  to  be  judged.  Against 
their  will  they  exhibit  those  decisive  trifles  by 
which  character  is  read.  But  who  judges?  and 
what  ?  Not  our  understanding.  We  do  not  read 
them  by  learning  or  craft.  No  ;  the  wisdom  of  the 
wise  man  consists  herein,  that  he  does  not  judge 
them ;  he  lets  them  judge  themselves  and  merely 
reads  and  records  their  own  verdict. 

By  virtue  of  this  inevitable  nature,  private  will 
is  overpowered,  and,  maugre  our  efforts  or  our  im 
perfections,  your  genius  will  speak  from  you,  and 
mine  from  me.  That  which  we  are,  we  shall  teach, 
not  voluntarily  but  involuntarily.  Thoughts  come 
into  our  minds  by  avenues  which  we  never  left 
open,  and  thoughts  go  out  of  our  minds  through 
avenues  which  we  never  voluntarily  opened.  Char- 
acter  teaches  over  our  head.  The  infallible  index 
of  true  progress  is  found  in  the  tone  the  man  takes. 
Neither  his  age,  nor  his  breeding,  nor  companyf 


THE  OVER-SOUL.  269 

nor  books,  nor  actions,  nor  talents,  nor  all  together 
can  hinder  him  from  being  deferential  to  a  higher 
spirit  than  his  own.  If  he  have  not  found  his  home 
in  God,  his  manners,  his  forms  of  speech,  the  turn 
of  his  sentences,  the  build,  shall  I  say,  of  all  his 
opinions  will  involuntarily  confess  it,  let  him  brave 
it  out  how  he  will.  If  he  have  found  his  centre, 
the  Deity  will  shine  through  him,  through  all  the 
disguises  of  ignorance,  of  ungenial  temperament, 
of  unfavorable  circumstance.  The  tone  of  seeking 
is  one,  and  the  tone  of  having  is  another. 

The  great  distinction  between  teachers  sacred  or 
literary,  —  between  poets  like  Herbert,  and  poets 
like  Pope,  —  between  philosophers  like  Spinoza, 
Kant  and  Coleridge,  and  philosophers  like  Locke, 
Paley,  Mackintosh  and  Stewart,  —  between  men  of 
the  world  who  are  reckoned  accomplished  talkers, 
and  here  and  there  a  fervent  mystic,  prophesying 
half  insane  under  the  infinitude  of  his  thought,  — 
is  that  one  class  speak  from  within,  or  from  expe 
rience,  as  parties  and  possessors  of  the  fact ;  and 
the  other  class  from  without,  as  spectators  merely, 
or  perhaps  as  acquainted  with  the  fact  on  the  evi 
dence  of  third  persons.  It  is  of  no  use  to  preach 
to  me  from  without.  I  can  do  that  too  easily  my 
self.  Jesus  speaks  always  from  within,  and  in  a 
degree  that  transcends  all  others.  In  that  is  the 
miracle.  I  believe  beforehand  that  it  ought  so  to 


270  THE   OVER-SOUL. 

be.  All  men  stand  continually  in  the  expectation 
of  the  appearance  of  such  a  teacher.  But  if  a  man 
do  not  speak  from  within  the  veil,  where  the  word 
is  one  with  that  it  tells  of,  let  him  lowly  confess 
it. 

The  same  Omniscience  flows  into  the  intellect 
and  makes  what  we  call  genius.  Much  of  the  wis 
dom  of  the  world  is  not  wisdom,  and  the  most  il 
luminated  class  of  men  are  no  doubt  superior  to 
literary  fame,  and  are  not  writers.  Among  the 
multitude  of  scholars  and  authors  we  feel  no  hallow 
ing  presence ;  we  are  sensible  of  a  knack  and  skill 
rather  than  of  inspiration ;  they  have  a  light  and 
know  not  whence  it  comes  and  call  it  their  own  ; 
their  talent  is  some  exaggerated  faculty,  some  over 
grown  member,  so  that  their  strength  is  a  disease. 
In  these  instances  the  intellectual  gifts  do  not  make 
the  impression  of  virtue,  but  almost  of  vice  ;  and 
we  feel  that  a  man's  talents  stand  in  the  way  of  his 
advancement  in  truth.  But  genius  is  religious.  It 
is  a  larger  imbibing  of  the  common  heart.  It  is 
not  anomalous,  but  more  like  and  not  less  like 
other  men.  There  is  in  all  great  poets  a  wisdom 
of  humanity  which  is  superior  to  any  talents  they 
exercise.  The  author,  the  wit,  the  partisan,  the 
fine  gentleman,  does  not  take  place  of  the  man. 
Humanity  shines  in  Homer,  in  Chaucer,  in  Spen 
Ber,  in  Shakspeare,  in  Milton.  They  are  contend 


THE    OVER-SOUL.  271 

with  truth.  They  use  the  positive  degree.  They 
seem  frigid  and  phlegmatic  to  those  who  have  been 
spiced  with  the  frantic  passion  and  violent  color 
ing  of  inferior  but  popular  writers.  For  they  are 
poets  by  the  free  course  which  they  allow  to  the  in 
forming  soul,  which  through  their  eyes  beholds 
again  and  blesses  the  things  which  it  hath  madec 
The  soul  is  superior  to  its  knowledge,  wiser  than 
any  of  its  works.  The  great  poet  makes  us  feel 
our  own  wealth,  and  then  we  think  less  of  his  com 
positions.  His  best  communication  to  our  mind  is 
to  teach  us  to  despise  all  he  has  done.  Shakspeare 
carries  us  to  such  a  lofty  strain  of  intelligent  activ 
ity  as  to  suggest  a  wealth  which  beggars  his  own  ; 
and  we  then  feel  that  the  splendid  works  which  he 
has  created,  and  which  in  other  hours  we  extol  as  a 
sort  of  self-existent  poetry,  take  no  stronger  hold 
of  real  nature  than  the  shadow  of  a  passing  travel 
ler  on  the  rock.  The  inspiration  which  uttered  itself 
in  Hamlet  and  Lear  could  utter  things  as  good 
from  day  to  day  for  ever.  Why  then  should  I 
make  account  of  Hamlet  and  Lear,  as  if  we  had 
not  the  soul  from  which  they  fell  as  syllables  from 
the  tongue  ? 

This  energy  does  not  descend  into  individual  life 
on  any  other  condition  than  entire  possession.  It 
comes  to  the  lowly  and  simple  ;  it  comes  to  whom 
soever  will  put  off  what  is  foreign  and  proud  ;  it 


272  THE  OVER- SOUL. 

comes  as  insight ;  it  comes  as  serenity  and  gran 
deur.  When  we  see  those  whom  it  inhabits,  we  are 
apprised  of  new  degrees  of  greatness.  From  that 
inspiration  the  man  comes  back  with  a  changed 
tone.  He  does  not  talk  with  men  with  an  eye  to 
their  opinion.  He  tries  them.  It  requires  of  us  to 
be  plain  and  true.  The  vain  traveller  attempts 
to  embellish  his  life  by  quoting  my  lord  and  the 
prince  and  the  countess,  who  thus  said  or  did  to 
him.  The  ambitious  vulgar  show  you  their  spoons 
and  brooches  and  rings,  and  preserve  their  cards 
and  compliments.  The  more  cultivated,  in  their 
account  of  their  own  experience,  cull  out  the  pleas 
ing,  poetic  circumstance,  —  the  visit  to  Rome,  the 
man  of  genius  they  saw,  the  brilliant  friend  they 
know  ;  still  further  on  perhaps  the  gorgeous  land 
scape,  the  mountain  lights,  the  mountain  thoughts 
they  enjoyed  yesterday,  —  and  so  seek  to  throw  a 
romantic  color  over  their  life.  But  the  soul  that 
ascends  to  worship  the  great  God  is  plain  and  true ; 
has  no  rose-color,  no  fine  friends,  no  chivalry,  no 
adventures ;  does  not  want  admiration  ;  dwells  in 
the  hour  that  now  is,  in  the  earnest  experience  of 
the  common  day,  —  by  reason  of  the  present  mo 
ment  and  the  mere  trifle  having  become  porous  to 
thought  and  bibulous  of  the  sea  of  light. 

Converse  with  a  mind  that  is  grandly  simple,  and 
literature  looks  like  word-catching.     The  simplest 


THE  OVER-SOUL.  273 

utterances  are  worthiest  to  be  written,  yet  are  they 
BO  cheap  and  so  things  of  course,  that  in  the  infinite 
riches  of  the  soul  it  is  like  gathering  a  few  pebbles 
off  the  ground,  or  bottling  a  little  air  in  a  phial, 
when  the  whole  earth  and  the  whole  atmosphere 
^re  ours.  Nothing  can  pass  there,  or  make  you  one 
of  the  circle,  but  the  casting  aside  your  trappings 
and  dealing  man  to  man  in  naked  truth,  plain  con 
fession  and  omniscient  affirmation. 

Souls  such  as  these  treat  you  as  gods  would,  walk 
as  gods  in  the  earth,  accepting  without  any  admira 
tion  your  wit,  your  bounty,  your  virtue  even,  —  say 
rather  your  act  of  duty,  for  your  virtue  they  own  as 
their  proper  blood,  royal  as  themselves,  and  over- 
royal,  and  the  father  of  the  gods.  But  what  re 
buke  their  plain  fraternal  bearing  casts  on  the  mu 
tual  flattery  with  which  authors  solace  each  other 
and  wound  themselves  !  These  flatter  not.  I  do 
not  wonder  that  these  men  go  to  see  Cromwell  and 
Christina  and  Charles  the  Second  and  James  the 
First  and  the  Grand  Turk.  For  they  are,  in  their 
own  elevation,  the  fellows  of  kings,  and  must  feel 
the  servile  tone  of  conversation  in  the  world.  They 
must  always  be  a  godsend  to  princes,  for  they  con 
front  them,  a  king  to  a  king,  without  ducking  or 
concession,  and  give  a  high  nature  the  refreshment 
and  satisfaction  of  resistance,  of  plain  humanity,  of 
even  companionship  and  of  new  ideas,  They  leave 

VOL.  ii.  18 


274  THE   OVER-SOUL. 

them  wiser  and  superior  men.  Souls  like  these 
make  us  feel  that  sincerity  is  more  excellent  than 
flattery.  Deal  so  plainly  with  man  and  woman  as 
to  constrain  the  utmost  sincerity  and  destroy  all 
hope  of  trifling  with  you.  It  is  the  highest  compli 
ment  you  can  pay.  Their  "  highest  praising," 
said  Milton,  "  is  not  flattery,  and  their  plainest  ad 
vice  is  a  kind  of  praising." 

Ineffable  is  the  union  of  man  and  God  in  every 
act  of  the  soul.  The  simplest  person  who  in  his 
integrity  worships  God,  becomes  God  ;  yet  for  ever 
and  ever  the  influx  of  this  better  and  universal  self 
is  new  and  unsearchable.  It  inspires  awe  and  aston 
ishment.  How  dear,  how  soothing  to  man,  arises 
the  idea  of  God,  peopling  the  lonely  place,  effacing 
the  scars  of  our  mistakes  and  disappointments ! 
When  we  have  broken  our  god  of  tradition  and 
ceased  from  our  god  of  rhetoric,  then  may  God  fire 
the  heart  with  his  presence.  It  is  the  doubling  of 
the  heart  itself,  nay,  the  infinite  enlargement  of  the 
heart  with  a  power  of  growth  to  a  new  infinity  on 
every  side.  It  inspires  in  man  an  infallible  trust. 
He  has  not  the  conviction,  but  the  sight,  that  the 
best  is  the  true,  and  may  in  that  thought  easily  dis 
miss  all  particular  uncertainties  and  fears,  and  ad 
journ  to  the  sure  revelation  of  time  the  solution  of 
his  private  riddles.  He  is  sure  that  his  welfare  is 
dear  to  the  heart  of  being.  In  the  presence  of  lav? 


THE   OVER-SOUL.  275 

to  his  mind  he  is  overflowed  with  a  reliance  so  uni 
versal  that  it  sweeps  away  all  cherished  hopes  and 
the  most  stable  projects  of  mortal  condition  in  its 
flood.  He  believes  that  he  cannot  escape  from  his 
good.  The  things  that  are  really  for  thee  gravitate 
to  thee.  You  are  running  to  seek  your  friend.  Let 
your  feet  run,  but  your  mind  need  not.  If  you  do 
not  find  him,  will  you  not  acquiesce  that  it  is  best 
you  should  not  find  him  ?  for  there  is  a  power, 
which,  as  it  is  in  you,  is  in  him  also,  and  could 
therefore  very  well  bring  you  together,  if  it  were 
for  the  best.  You  are  preparing  with  eagerness  to 
go  and  render  a  service  to  which  your  talent  and 
your  taste  invite  you,  the  love  of  men  and  the  hope 
of  fame.  Has  it  not  occurred  to  you  that  you  have 
no  right  to  go,  unless  you  are  equally  willing  to  be 
prevented  from  going  ?  O,  believe,  as  thou  livest, 
that  every  sound  that  is  spoken  over  the  round 
world,  which  thou  oughtest  to  hear,  will  vibrate  on 
thine  ear !  Every  proverb,  every  book,  every  by 
word  that  belongs  to  thee  for  aid  or  comfort,  shall 
surely  come  home  through  open  or  winding  pas 
sages.  Every  friend  whom  not  thy  fantastic  will 
but  the  great  and  tender  heart  in  thee  craveth, 
shall  lock  thee  in  his  embrace.  And  this  because 
the  heart  in  thee  is  the  heart  of  all ;  not  a  valve, 
not  a  wall,  not  an  intersection  is  there  anywhere  in 
nature,  but  one  blood  rolls  uninterruptedly  an  end- 


276  THE   OVER-SOUL. 

less  circulation  through  all  men,  as  the  water  of 
the  globe  is  all  one  sea,  and,  truly  seen,  its  tide  is 
one. 

Let  man  then  learn  the  revelation  of  all  nature 
and  all  thought  to  his  heart ;  this,  namely  ;  that  the 
Highest  dwells  with  him  ;  that  the  sources  of  na 
ture  are  in  his  own  mind,  if  the  sentiment  of  duty 
is  there.  But  if  he  would  know  what  the  great 
God  speaketh,  he  must  '  go  into  his  closet  and  shut 
the  door,'  as  Jesus  said.  God  will  not  make  him 
self  manifest  to  cowards.  He  must  greatly  listen 
to  himself,  withdrawing  himself  from  all  the  accents 
of  other  men's  devotion.  Even  their  prayers  are 
hurtful  to  him,  until  he  have  made  his  own.  Our 
religion  vulgarly  stands  on  numbers  of  believers. 
Whenever  the  appeal  is  made,  —  no  matter  how  in 
directly,  —  to  numbers,  proclamation  is  then  and 
there  made  that  religion  is  not.  He  that  finds  God 
a  sweet  enveloping  thought  to  him  never  counts  his 
company.  When  I  sit  in  that  presence,  who  shall 
dare  to  come  in  ?  When  I  rest  in  perfect  humility, 
when  I  burn  with  pure  love,  what  can  Calvin  or 
Swedenborg  say  ? 

It  makes  no  difference  whether  the  appeal  is  to 
numbers  or  to  one.  The  faith  that  stands  on  au 
thority  is  not  faith.  The  reliance  on  authority 
measures  the  decline  of  religi  MI,  the  withdrawal  of 
iihe  soul.  The  position  men  have  given  to  Jesus, 


THE  OVER-SOUL.  277 

now  for  many  centuries  of  history,  is  a  position  of 
authority.  It  characterizes  themselves.  It  cannot 
alter  the  eternal  facts.  Great  is  the  soul,  and 
plain.  It  is  no  flatterer,  it  is  no  follower  ;  it  never 
appeals  from  itself.  It  believes  in  itself.  Before 
the  immense  possibilities  of  man  all  mere  experi 
ence,  all  past  biography,  however  spotless  and 
sainted,  shrinks  away.  Before  that  heaven  which 
our  presentiments  foreshow  us,  we  cannot  easily 
praise  any  form  of  life  we  have  seen  or  read  of. 
We  not  only  affirm  that  we  have  few  great  men, 
but,  absolutely  speaking,  that  we  have  none  ;  that 
we  have  no  history,  no  record  of  any  character  or 
mode  of  living  that  entirely  contents  us.  The 
saints  and  demigods  whom  history  worships  we  are 
constrained  to  accept  with  a  grain  of  allowance. 
Though  in  our  lonely  hours  we  draw  a  new  strength 
out  of  their  memory,  yet,  pressed  on  our  attention, 
as  they  are  by  the  thoughtless  and  customary,  they 
fatigue  and  invade.  The  soul  gives  itself,  alone, 
original  and  pure,  to  the  Lonely,  Original  and 
Pure,  who,  on  that  condition,  gladly  inhabits,  leads 
and  speaks  through  it.  Then  is  it  glad,  young  and 
nimble.  It  is  not  wise,  but  it  sees  through  all 
things.  It  is  not  called  religious,  but  it  is  innocent. 
It  calls  the  light  its  own,  and  feels  that  the  grass 
grows  and  the  stone  falls  by  a  law  inferior  to,  and 
dependent  on,  its  nature.  Behold,  it  saith,  I  am 


278  THE  OWR-SOUL. 

born  into  the  great,  the  universal  mind.  I,  the  in> 
perfect,  adore  my  own  Perfect.  I  am  somehow 
receptive  of  the  great  soul,  and  thereby  I  do  over 
look  the  sun  and  the  stars  and  feel  them  to  be  the 
fair  accidents  and  effects  which  change  and  pass. 
More  and  more  the  surges  of  everlasting  nature  en 
ter  into  me,  and  I  become  public  and  human  in  my 
regards  and  actions.  So  come  I  to  live  in  thoughts 
and  act  with  energies  which  are  immortal.  Thus 
revering  the  soul,  and  learning,  as  the  ancient  said, 
that  "  its  beauty  is  immense,"  man  will  come  to  see 
that  the  world  is  the  perennial  miracle  which  the 
soul  worketh,  and  be  less  astonished  at  particular 
wonders ;  he  will  learn  that  there  is  no  profane  his 
tory  ;  that  all  history  is  sacred ;  that  the  universe  is 
represented  in  an  atom,  in  a  moment  of  time.  He 
will  weave  no  longer  a  spotted  life  of  shreds  and 
patches,  but  he  will  live  with  a  divine  unity.  He 
will  cease  from  what  is  base  and  frivolous  in  his 
life  and  be  content  with  all  places  and  with  any 
service  he  can  render.  He  will  calmly  front  the 
morrow  in  the  negligency  of  that  trust  which  car 
ries  God  with  it  and  so  hath  already  the  whole  fu« 
hire  in  the  bottom  of  the  heart. 


CIRCLES. 


NATURE  centres  into  balls, 
And  her  proud  ephemerals, 
Fast  to  surface  and  outside, 
Scan  the  profile  of  the  spherej 
Knew  they  what  that  signified^ 
A  new  genesis  were  here. 


X. 

CIRCLES. 


THE  eye  is  the  first  circle ;  the  horizon  which  it 
forms  is  the  second  ;  and  throughout  nature  th?s 
primary  figure  is  repeated  without  end.  It  is  the 
highest  emblem  in  the  cipher  of  the  world.  St. 
Augustine  described  the  nature  of  God  as  a  circle 
whose  centre  was  everywhere  and  its  circumference 
nowhere.  We  are  all  our  lifetime  reading  the  co 
pious  sense  of  this  first  of  forms.  One  moral  we 
have  already  deduced  in  considering  the  circular  or 
compensatory  character  of  every  human  action. 
Another  analogy  we  shall  now  trace,  that  every  ac 
tion  admits  of  being  outdone.  Our  life  is  an  ap 
prenticeship  to  the  truth  that  around  every  circle 
another  can  be  drawn  ;  that  there  is  no  end  in  na 
ture,  but  every  end  is  a  beginning ;  that  there  is 
always  another  dawn  risen  on  mid-noon,  and  under 
every  deep  a  lower  deep  opens. 

This  fact,  as  far  as  it  symbolizes  the  moral  fact 
of  the  Unattainable,  the  flying  Perfect,  around 
frhich  the  hands  of  man  can  never  meet,  at  once 


282  CIRCLES. 

the  inspirer  and  the  condemner  of  every  success, 
may  conveniently  serve  us  to  connect  many  illus 
trations  of  human  power  in  every  department. 

There  are  no  fixtures  in  nature.  The  universe 
is  fluid  and  volatile.  Permanence  is  but  a  word  of 
degrees.  Our  globe  seen  by  God  is  a  transparent 
law,  not  a  mass  of  facts.  The  law  dissolves  the 
fact  and  holds  it  fluid.  Our  culture  is  the  predom 
inance  of  an  idea  which  draws  after  it  this  train  of 
cities  and  institutions.  Let  us  rise  into  another 
idea ;  they  will  disappear.  The  Greek  sculpture  is 
all  melted  away,  as  if  it  had  been  statues  of  ice ; 
here  and  there  a  solitary  figure  or  fragment  re 
maining,  as  we  see  flecks  and  scraps  of  snow  left  in 
cold  dells  and  mountain  clefts  in  June  and  July. 
For  the  genius  that  created  it  creates  now  some 
what  else.  The  Greek  letters  last  a  little  longer, 
but  are  already  passing  under  the  same  sentence 
and  tumbling  into  the  inevitable  pit  which  the  cre 
ation  of  new  thought  opens  for  all  that  is  old.  The 
new  continents  are  built  out  of  the  ruins  of  an  old 
planet ;  the  new  racos  fed  out  of  the  decomposition 
of  the  foregoing.  New  arts  destroy  the  old.  See 
the  investment  of  capital  in  aqueducts,  made  use 
less  by  hydraulics;  fortifications,  by  gunpowder? 
roads  and  canals,  by  railways ;  sails,  by  steam ; 
Bteam  by  electricity. 

You  admire  this  tower  of  granite,  weathering  the 


CIRCLES.  283 

hurts  of  so  many  ages.  Yet  a  little  waving  hand 
built  this  huge  wall,  and  that  wliich  builds  is  better 
than  that  wliich  is  built.  The  hand  that  built 
can  topple  it  down  much  faster.  Better  than  the 
hand  and  nimbler  was  the  invisible  thought  which 
wrought  through  it ;  and  thus  ever,  behind  the 
coarse  effect,  is  a  fine  cause,  which,  being  narrowly 
seen,  is  itself  the  effect  of  a  finer  cause.  Ever^ 
thing  looks  permanent  until  its  secret  is  known.  A 
rich  estate  appears  to  women  a  firm  and  lasting 
fact ;  to  a  merchant,  one  easily  created  out  of  any 
materials,  and  easily  lost.  An  orchard,  good  til 
lage,  good  grounds,  seem  a  fixture,  like  a  gold  mine, 
or  a  river,  to  a  citizen ;  but  to  a  large  farmer,  not 
much  more  fixed  than  the  state  of  the  crop.  Na 
ture  looks  provokingly  stable  and  secular,  but  it 
has  a  cause  like  all  the  rest ;  and  when  once  I  com 
prehend  that,  will  these  fields  stretch  so  immovably 
wide,  these  leaves  hang  so  individually  considera 
ble?  Permanence  is  a  word  of  degrees.  Every 
thing  is  medial.  Moons  are  no  more  bounds  to 
spiritual  power  than  bat-balls. 

The  key  to  every  man  is  his  thought.  Sturdy 
and  defying  though  he  look,  he  has  a  helm  which 
he  obeys,  which  is  the  idea  after  which  all  his  facts 
are  classified.  He  can  only  be  reformed  by  show 
ing  him  a  new  idea  which  commands  his  own.  The 
life  of  man  is  a  self -evolving  circle,  which,  from  a 


284  CIRCLES. 

ring  imperceptibly  small,  rushes  on  all  sides  out 
wards  to  new  and  larger  circles,  and  that  without 
end.  The  extent  to  which  this  generation  of  cir 
cles,  wheel  without  wheel,  will  go,  depends  on  the 
force  or  truth  of  the  individual  soul.  For  it  is  the 
inert  effort  of  each  thought,  having  formed  itself 
into  a  circular  wave  of  circumstance,  —  as  for  in 
stance  an  empire,  rules  of  an  art,  a  local  usage,  a 
religious  rite,  —  to  heap  itself  on  that  ridge  and  to 
solidify  and  hem  in  the  life.  But  if  the  soul  is 
quick  and  strong  it  bursts  over  that  boundary  on 
all  sides  and  expands  another  orbit  on  the  great 
deep,  which  also  runs  up  into  a  high  wave,  with  at 
tempt  again  to  stop  and  to  bind.  But  the  heart 
refuses  to  be  imprisoned ;  in  its  first  and  narrowest 
pulses  it  already  tends  outward  with  a  vast  force 
and  to  immense  and  innumerable  expansions. 

Every  ultimate  fact  is  only  the  first  of  a  new  se 
ries.  Every  general  law  only  a  particular  fact  of 
some  more  general  law  presently  to  disclose  itself. 
There  is  no  outside,  no  inclosing  wall,  no  circum 
ference  to  us.  The '  man  finishes  his  story,  —  how 
good  !  how  final !  how  it  puts  a  new  face  on  all 
things  !  He  fills  the  sky.  Lo  !  on  the  other  side 
rises  also  a  man  and  draws  a  circle  around  the  cir 
cle  we  had  just  pronounced  the  outline  of  the 
sphere.  Then  already  is  our  first  speaker  not  man, 
but  only  a  first  speaker.  His  only  redress  is  forth- 


CIRCLES.  285 

to  draw  a  circle  outside  of  his  antagonist. 
And  so  men  do  by  themselves."  The  result  of  to 
day,  which  haunts  the  mind  and  cannot  be  escaped, 
will  presently  be  abridged  into  a  word,  and  the 
principle  that  seemed  to  explain  nature  will  itself 
be  included  as  one  example  of  a  bolder  generaliza 
tion.  In  the  thought  of  to-morrow  there  is  a  power 
to  upheave  all  thy  creed,  all  the  creeds,  all  the 
literatures  of  the  nations,  and  marshal  thee  to  a 
heaven  which  no  epic  dream  has  yet  depicted. 
Every  man  is  not  so  much  a  workman  in  the  world 
as  he  is  a  suggestion  of  that  he  should  be.  Men 
walk  as  prophecies  of  the  next  age. 

Step  by  step  we  scale  this  mysterious  ladder ; 
the  steps  are  actions,  the  new  prospect  is  power. 
Every  several  result  is  threatened  and  judged  by 
that  which  follows.  Every  one  seems  to  be  contra 
dicted  by  the  new ;  it  is  only  limited  by  the  new. 
The  new  statement  is  always  hated  by  the  old,  and, 
to  those  dwelling  in  the  old,  comes  like  an  abyss  of 
scepticism.  But  the  eye  soon  gets  wonted  to  it, 
for  the  eye  and  it  are  effects  of  one  cause  ;  then  its 
innocency  and  benefit  appear,  and  presently,  all  its 
energy  spent,  it  pales  and  dwindles  before  the  rev 
elation  of  the  new  hour. 

Fear  not  the  new  generalization.  Does  the  fact 
look  crass  and  material,  threatening  to  degrade  thy 
theory  of  spirit  ?  Resist  it  not ;  it  goes  to  refine 
and  raise  thy  theory  of  matter  just  as  much. 


286  CIRCLES. 

There  are  no  fixtures  to  men,  if  we  appeal  to 
consciousness.  Every  man  supposes  himself  not  to 
be  fully  understood ;  and  if  there  is  any  truth  in 
him,  if  he  rests  at  last  on  the  divine  soul,  I  see  not 
how  it  can  be  otherwise.  The  last  chamber,  the 
last  closet,  he  must  feel  was  never  opened  ;  there  is 
always  a  residuum  unknown,  unaiialyzable.  That 
is,  every  man  believes  that  he  has  a  greater  possi 
bility. 

Our  moods  do  not  believe  in  each  other.  To-day 
I  am  full  of  thoughts  and  can  write  what  I  please. 
I  see  no  reason  why  I  should  not  have  the  same 
thought,  the  same  power  of  expression,  to-morrow. 
What  I  write,  whilst  I  write  it,  seems  the  most  nat 
ural  thing  in  the  world;  but  yesterday  I  saw  a 
dreary  vacuity  in  this  direction  in  which  now  I  see 
so  much ;  and  a  month  hence,  I  doubt  not,  I  shall 
wonder  who  he  was  that  wrote  so  many  continuous 
pages.  Alas  for  this  infirm  faith,  this  will  not 
strenuous,  this  vast  ebb  of  a  vast  flow !  I  am  God 
in  nature ;  I  am  a  weed  by  the  wall. 

The  continual  effort  to  raise  himself  above  him 
self,  to  work  a  pitch  above  his  last  height,  betrays 
itself  in  a  man's  relations.  We  thirst  for  approba 
tion,  yet  cannot  forgive  the  approver.  The  sweet 
of  nature  is  love  ;  yet  if  I  have  a  friend  I  am  tor 
mented  by  my  imperfections.  The  love  of  me  accuses 
the  other  party.  If  he  Wfire  high  enough  to  slight 


CIRCLES.  287 

me,  then  could  I  love  him,  and  rise  by  my  affection 
to  new  heights.  A  man's  growth  is  seen  in  the 
successive  choirs  of  his  friends.  For  every  friend 
whom  he  loses  for  truth,  he  gains  a  better.  I 
thought  as  I  walked  in  the  woods  and  mused  on  my 
friends,  why  should  I  play  with  them  this  game  of 
idolatry?  I  know  and  see  too  well,  when  not  vol 
untarily  blind,  the  speedy  limits  of  persons  called 
high  and  worthy.  Rich,  noble  and  great  they  are 
by  the  liberality  of  our  speech,  but  truth  is  sad.  O 
blessed  Spirit,  whom  I  forsake  for  these,  they  are 
not  thou !  Every  personal  consideration  that  we 
allow  costs  us  heavenly  state.  We  sell  the  thrones 
of  angels  for  a  short  and  turbulent  pleasure. 

How  often  must  we  learn  this  lesson  ?  Men 
cease  to  interest  us  when  we  find  their  limitations. 
The  only  sin  is  limitation.  As  soon  as  you  once 
come  up  with  a  man's  limitations,  it  is  all  over  with 
him.  Has  he  talents  ?  has  he  enterprise  ?  has  he 
knowledge  ?  It  boots  not.  Infinitely  alluring  and 
attractive  was  he  to  you  yesterday,  a  great  hope,  a 
sea  to  swim  in ;  now,  you  have  found  his  shores, 
found  it  a  pond,  and  you  care  not  if  you  never  see 
it  again. 

Each  new  step  we  take  in  thought  reconciles 
twenty  seemingly  discordant  facts,  as  expression? 
of  one  law.  Aristotle  and  Plato  are  reckoned  the 
respective  heads  of  two  schools.  A  wise  man  wiU 


288  CIRCLES. 

see  that  Aristotle  platonizes.  By  going  one  step 
farther  back  in  thought,  discordant  opinions  are 
reconciled  by  being  seen  to  be  two  extremes  of  one 
principle,  and  we  can  never  go  so  far  back  as  to 
preclude  a  still  higher  vision. 

Beware  when  the  great  God  lets  loose  a  thinker 
on  this  planet.  Then  all  things  are  at  risk.  It  is 
as  when  a  conflagration  has  broken  out  in  a  great 
city,  and  no  man  knows  what  is  safe,  or  where  it 
will  end.  There  is  not  a  piece  of  science  but  its 
flank  may  be  turned  to-morrow ;  there  is  not  any 
literary  reputation,  not  the  so-called  eternal  names 
of  fame,  that  may  not  be  revised  and  condemned. 
The  very  hopes  of  man,  the  thoughts  of  his  heart, 
the  religion  of  nations,  the  manners  and  morals  of 
mankind  are  all  at  the  mercy  of  a  new  generaliza 
tion.  Generalization  is  always  a  new  influx  of  the 
divinity  into  the  mind.  Hence  the  thrill  that  at 
tends  it. 

Valor  consists  in  the  power  of  self -recovery,  so 
that  a  man  cannot  have  his  flank  turned,  cannot  be 
out-generalled,  but  put  him  where  you  will,  he 
stands.  This  can  only  be  by  his  preferring  truth 
to  his  past  apprehension  of  truth,  and  his  alert  ac 
ceptance  of  it  from  whatever  quarter  ;  the  intrepid 
conviction  that  his  laws,  his  relations  to  society, 
his  Christianity,  his  world,  may  at  any  time  be  su 
perseded  and  decease. 


CIRCLES.  289 

There  are  degrees  in  idealism.  We  learn  first 
to  play  with  it  academically,  as  the  magnet  was 
once  a  toy.  Then  we  see  in  the  heyday  of  youth 
and  poetry  that  it  may  be  true,  that  it  is  true  in 
gleams  and  fragments.  Then  its  countenance 
waxes  stern  and  grand,  and  we  see  that  it  must  be 
true.  It  now  shows  itself  ethical  and  practical. 
We  learn  that  God  is  ;  that  he  is  in  me  ;  and  that 
all  things  are  shadows  of  him.  The  idealism  of 
Berkeley  is  only  a  crude  statement  of  the  idealism 
of  Jesus,  and  that  again  is  a  crude  statement  of 
the  fact  that  all  nature  is  the  rapid  efflux  of  good 
ness  executing  and  organizing  itself.  Much  more 
obviously  is  history  and  the  state  of  the  world  at 
any  one  time  directly  dependent  on  the  intellectual 
classification  then  existing  in  the  minds  of  men. 
The  things  which  are  dear  to  men  at  this  hour  are 
so  on  account  of  the  ideas  which  have  emerged  on 
their  mental  horizon,  and  which  cause  the  present 
order  of  things,  as  a  tree  bears  its  apples.  A  new 
degree  of  culture  would  instantly  revolutionize  the 
entire  system  of  human  pursuits. 

Conversation  is  a  game  of  circles.  In  conversa 
tion  we  pluck  up  the  termini  which  bound  the  com 
mon  of  silence  on  every  side.  The  parties  are  not 
to  be  judged  by  the  spirit  they  partake  and  even 
express  under  this  Pentecost.  To-morrow  they  will 
have  receded  from  this  high-water  mark.  To-mor- 

VOL.   II.  19 


290  CIRCLES. 

row  you  shall  find  them  stooping  under  the  old 
pack-saddles.  Yet  let  us  enjoy  the  cloven  flame 
whilst  it  glows  on  our  walls.  When  each  new 
speaker  strikes  a  new  light,  emancipates  us  from 
the  oppression  of  the  last  speaker  to  oppress  us 
with  the  greatness  and  exclusiveness  of  his  own 
thought,  then  yields  us  to  another  redeemer,  we 
seem  to  recover  our  rights,  to  become  men.  O, 
what  truths  profound  and  executable  only  in  ages 
and  orbs,  are  supposed  in  the  announcement  of 
every  truth !  In  common  hours,  society  sits  cold 
and  statuesque.  We  all  stand  waiting,  empty,  — 
knowing,  possibly,  that  we  can  be  full,  surrounded 
by  mighty  symbols  which  are  not  symbols  to  us, 
but  prose  and  trivial  toys.  Then  cometh  the  god 
and  converts  the  statues  into  fiery  men,  and  by  a 
flash  of  his  eye  burns  up  the  veil  which  shrouded 
all  things,  and  the  meaning  of  the  very  furniture, 
of  cup  and  saucer,  of  chair  and  clock  and  tester,  is 
manifest.  The  facts  which  loomed  so  large  in  the 
fogs  of  yesterday,  —  property,  climate,  breeding, 
personal  beauty  and  the  like,  have  strangely 
changed  their  proportions.  All  that  we  reckoned 
settled  shakes  and  rattles  ;  and  literatures,  cities, 
climates,  religions,  leave  their  foundations  and 
dance  before  our  eyes.  And  yet  here  again  see  the 
swift  circumscription !  Good  as  is  discourse,  si 
lence  is  better,  and  shames  it.  The  length  of  the 


CIRCLES.  291 

.discourse  indicates  the  distance  of  thought  betwixt 
the  speaker  and  the  hearer.  If  they  were  at  a  per 
fect  understanding  in  any  part,  no  words  would  be 
necessary  thereon.  If  at  one  in  all  parts,  no  words 
would  be  suffered. 

Literature  is  a  point  outside  of  our  hodiernal  cir 
cle  through  which  a  new  one  may  be  described. 
The  use  of  literature  is  to  afford  us  a  platform 
whence  we  may  command  a  view  of  our  present 
life,  a  purchase  by  which  we  may  move  it.  We 
fill  ourselves  with  ancient  learning,  install  ourselves 
the  best  we  can  in  Greek,  in  Punic,  in  Roman 
houses,  only  that  wre  may  wiselier  see  French,  Eng 
lish  and  American  houses  and  modes  of  living.  In 
like  manner  we  see  literature  best  from  the  midst 
of  wild  nature,  or  from  the  din  of  affairs,  or  from 
a  high  religion.  The  field  cannot  be  well  seen 
from  within  the  field.  The  astronomer  must  have 
his  diameter  of  the  earth's  orbit  as  a  base  to  find 
the  parallax  of  any  star. 

Therefore  we  value  the  poet.  All  the  argument 
and  all  the  wisdom  is  not  in  the  encyclopedia,  or 
the  treatise  on  metaphysics,  or  the  Body  of  Divin 
ity,  but  in  the  sonnet  or  the  play.  In  my  daily 
work  I  incline  to  repeat  my  old  steps,  and  do  not 
believe  in  remedial  force,  in  the  power  of  change 
and  reform.  But  some  Petrarch  or  Ariosto,  filled 
with  the  new  wine  of  his  imagination,  writes  me  an 


292  CIRCLES. 

ode  or  a  brisk  romance,  full  of  daring  thought  and 
action.  He  smites  and  arouses  me  with  his  shrill 
tones,  breaks  up  my  whole  chain  of  habits,  and  I 
open  my  eye  on  my  own  possibilities.  He  claps 
wings  to  the  sides  of  all  the  solid  old  lumber  of  the 
world,  and  I  am  capable  once  more  of  choosing  a 
straight  path  in  theory  and  practice. 

We  have  the  same  need  to  command  a  view  of 
the  religion  of  the  world.  We  can  never  see 
Christianity  from  the  catechism  :  —  from  the  pas 
tures,  from  a  boat  in  the  pond,  from  amidst  the 
songs  of  wood-birds  we  possibly  may.  Cleansed 
by  the  elemental  light  and  wind,  steeped  in  the  sea 
of  beautiful  forms  which  the  field  offers  us,  we  may 
chance  to  cast  a  right  glance  back  upon  biography. 
Christianity  is  rightly  dear  to  the  best  of  mankind  ; 
yet  was  there  never  a  young  philosopher  whose 
breeding  had  fallen  into  the  Christian  church  by 
whom  that  brave  text  of  Paul's  was  not  specially 
prized  :  —  "  Then  shall  also  the  Son  be  subject 
unto  Him  who  put  all  things  under  him,  that  God 
may  be  all  in  all."  Let  the  claims  and  virtues  of 
persons  be  never  so  great  and  welcome,  the  instinct 
of  man  presses  eagerly  onward  to  the  impersonal 
and  illimitable,  and  gladly  arms  itself  against  the 
dogmatism  of  bigots  with  this  generous  word  out 
of  the  book  itself. 

The  natural  world  may  be  conceived  of  as  a  sys- 


CIRCLES.  293 

tern  of  concentric  circles,  and  we  now  and  then  de 
tect  in  nature  slight  dislocations  which  apprise  us 
that  this  surface  on  which  we  now  stand  is  not 
fixed,  but  sliding.  These  manifold  tenacious  qual 
ities,  this  chemistry  and  vegetation,  these  metals 
and  animals,  which  seem  to  stand  there  for  their 
own  sake,  are  means  and  methods  only,  —  are  words 
of  God,  and  as  fugitive  as  other  words.  Has  the 
naturalist  or  chemist  learned  his  craft,  who  has  ex 
plored  the  gravity  of  atoms  and  the  elective  affini 
ties,  who  has  not  yet  discerned  the  deeper  law 
whereof  this  is  only  a  partial  or  approximate  state 
ment,  namely  that  like  draws  to  like,  and  that  the 
goods  which  belong  to  you  gravitate  to  you  and 
need  not  be  pursued  with  pains  and  cost  ?  Yet  is 
that  statement  approximate  also,  and  not  final. 
Omnipresence  is  a  higher  fact.  Not  through  subtle 
subterranean  channels  need  friend  and  fact  be 
drawn  to  their  counterpart,  but,  rightly  considered, 
these  things  proceed  from  the  eternal  generation  of 
the  soul.  Cause  and  effect  are  two  sides  of  one 
fact. 

The  same  law  of  eternal  procession  ranges  all 
that  we  call  the  virtues,  and  extinguishes  each  in 
the  light  of  a  better.  The  great  man  will  not  be 
prudent  in  the  popular  sense  ;  all  his  prudence  will 
be  so  much  deduction  from  his  grandeur.  But  it 
behooves  each  to  see,  when  he  sacrifices  prudence, 


204  CIRCLES. 

to  what  god  he  devotes  it ;  if  to  ease  and  pleasure, 
lie  had  better  be  prudent  still ;  if  to  a  great  trust, 
he  can  well  spare  his  mule  and  panniers  who  has  a 
winged  chariot  instead.  Geoffrey  draws  on  his 
boots  to  go  through  the  woods,  that  his  feet  may  be 
safer  from  the  bite  of  snakes ;  Aaron  never  thinks 
of  such  a  peril.  In  many  years  neither  is  harmed 
by  such  an  accident.  Yet  it  seems  to  me  that  with 
every  precaution  you  take  against  such  an  evil  you 
put  yourself  into  the  power  of  the  evil.  I  suppose 
that  the  highest  prudence  is  the  lowest  prudence. 
Is  this  too  sudden  a  rushing  from  the  centre  to  the 
verge  of  our  orbit  ?  Think  how  many  times  we 
shall  fall  back  into  pitiful  calculations  before  we 
take  up  our  rest  in  the  great  sentiment,  or  make 
the  verge  of  to-day  the  new  centre.  Besides,  your 
bravest  sentiment  is  familiar  to  the  humblest  men. 
The  poor  and  the  low  have  their  way  of  express 
ing  the  last  facts  of  philosophy  as  well  as  you. 
"  Blessed  be  nothing  "  and  "  The  worse  things  are, 
the  better  they  are  "  are  proverbs  which  express 
the  transcendentalism  of  common  life. 

One  man's  justice  is  another's  injustice ;  one 
man's  beauty  another's  ugliness ;  one  man's  wisdom 
another's  folly  ;  as  one  beholds  the  same  objects 
from  a  higher  point.  One  man  thinks  justice  con 
sists  in  paying  debts,  and  has  no  measure  in  his  ab 
horrence  of  another  who  is  very  remiss  in  this  duty 


CIRCLES.  295 

and  makes  the  creditor  wait  tediously.  But  that 
second  man  has  his  own  way  of  looking  at  things  ; 
asks  himself  Which  debt  must  I  pay  first,  the  debt 
to  the  rich,  or  the  debt  to  the  poor?  the  debt  of 
money,  or  the  debt  of  thought  to  mankind,  of  gen 
ius  to  nature?  For  you,  O  broker,  there  is  no 
other  principle  but  arithmetic.  For  me,  commerce 
is  of  trivial  import ;  love,  faith,  truth  of  character, 
the  aspiration  of  man,  these  are  sacred  ;  nor  can  I 
detach  one  duty,  like  you,  from  all  other  duties, 
and  concentrate  my  forces  mechanically  on  the  pay 
ment  of  moneys.  Let  me  live  onward ;  you  shall 
find  that,  though  slower,  the  progress  of  my  charac 
ter  will  liquidate  all  these  debts  without  injustice 
to  higher  claims.  If  a  man  should  dedicate  him 
self  to  the  payment  of  notes,  would  not  this  be  in 
justice?  Does  he  owe  no  debt  but  money?  And 
are  all  claims  on  him  to  be  postponed  to  a  land 
lord's  or  a  banker's  ? 

There  is  no  virtue  which  is  final ;  all  are  initial. 
The  virtues  of  society  are  vices  of  the  saint.  The 
terror  of  reform  is  the  discovery  that  we  must  cast 
away  our  virtues,  or  what  we  have  always  esteemed 
such,  into  the  same  pit  that  has  consumed  our 
grosser  vices  :  — 

"  Forgive  his  crimes,  forgive  his  virtues  too, 
Those  smaller  faults,  half  converts  to  the  right." 

It  is  the  highest  power  of  divine  moments  that 


296  CIRCLES. 

they  abolish  our  contritions  also.  I  accuse  myself 
of  sloth  and  unprofitableness  day  by  day  ;  but  when 
these  waves  of  God  flow  into  me  I  no  longer  reckon 
lost  time.  I  no  longer  poorly  compute  my  possible 
achievement  by  what  remains  to  me  of  the  month 
or  the  year;  for  these  moments  confer  a  sort  of, 
omnipresence  and  omnipotence  which  asks  nothing 
of  duration,  but  sees  that  the  energy  of  the  mind 
is  commensurate  with  the  work  to  be  done,  without 
time. 

And  thus,  O  circular  philosopher,  I  hear  some 
reader  exclaim,  you  have  arrived  at  a  fine  Pyr 
rhonism,  at  an  equivalence  and  indifferency  of  all 
actions,  and  would  fain  teach  us  that  if  we  are  true, 
forsooth,  our  crimes  may  be  lively  stones  out  of 
which  we  shall  construct  the  temple  of  the  true 
God! 

I  am  not  careful  to  justify  myself.  I  own  I  am 
gladdened  by  seeing  the  predominance  of  the  sac 
charine  principle  throughout  vegetable  nature,  and 
not  less  by  beholding  in  morals  that  unrestrained 
inundation  of  the  principle  of  good  into  every  chink 
and  hole  that  selfishness  has  left  open,  yea  into  self 
ishness  and  sin  itself ;  so  that  no  evil  is  pure,  nor 
hell  itself  without  its  extreme  satisfactions.  But 
lest  I  should  mislead  any  when  I  have  my  own 
head  and  obey  my  whims,  let  me  remind  the  reader 
that  I  am  only  an  experimenter.  Do  not  set  the 


CIRCLES.  297 

least  value  on  what  I  do,  or  the  least  discredit  on 
what  I  do  not,  as  if  I  pretended  to  settle  any  thing 
as  true  or  false.  I  unsettle  all  things.  No  facts 
are  to  me  sacred  ;  none  are  profane  ;  I  simply  ex 
periment,  an  endless  seeker  with  no  Past  at  my 
jback. 

Yet  this  incessant  movement  and  progression 
which  all  things  partake  could  never  become  sensi 
ble  to  us  but  by  contrast  to  some  principle  of  fix 
ture  or  stability  in  the  soul.  Whilst  the  eternal 
generation  of  circles  proceeds,  the  eternal  generator 
abides.  That  central  life  is  somewhat  superior  to 
creation,  superior  to  knowledge  and  thought,  and 
contains  all  its  circles.  Forever  it  labors  to  create 
a  life  and  thought  as  large  and  excellent  as  itself, 
but  in  vain,  for  that  which  is  made  instructs  how  to 
make  a  better. 

Thus  there  is  no  sleep,  no  pause,  no  preservation, 
but  all  things  renew,  germinate  and  spring.  Why 
should  we  import  rags  and  relics  into  the  new 
hour  ?  Nature  abhors  the  old,  and  old  age  seems 
the  only  disease  ;  all  others  run  into  this  one.  We 
call  it  by  many  names,  —  fever,  intemperance,  in 
sanity,  stupidity  and  crime  ;  they  are  all  forms  of 
old  age  ;  they  are  rest,  conservatism,  appropriation, 
inertia  ;  not  newness,  jiot  the  way  onward.  We 
grizzle  every  day.  I  see  no  need  of  it.  Whilst  we 
converse  with  what  is  above  us,  we  do  not  grow 


298  CIRCLES. 

old,  but  grow  young.  Infancy,  youth,  receptive,  as 
piring,  with  religious  eye  looking  upward,  counts 
itself  nothing  and  abandons  itself  to  the  instruction 
flowing  from  all  sides.  But  the  man  and  woman 
of  seventy  assume  to  know  all,  they  have  outlived 
their  hope,  they  renounce  aspiration,  accept  the 
actual  for  the  necessary  and  talk  down  to  the 
young.  Let  them  then  become  organs  of  the  Holy 
Ghost ;  let  them  be  lovers  ;  let  them  behold  truth  ; 
and  their  eyes  are  uplifted,  their  wrinkles  smoothed, 
they  are  perfumed  again  with  hope  and  power. 
This  old  age  ought  not  to  creep  on  a  human  mind. 
In  nature  every  moment  is  new ;  the  past  is  always 
swallowed  and  forgotten  ;  the  coming  only  is  sacred. 
Nothing  is  secure  but  life,  transition,  the  energiz- 
ing  spirit.  No  love  can  be  bound  by  oath  or  cove 
nant  to  secure  it  against  a  higher  love.  No  truth 
so  sublime  but  it  may  be  trivial  to-morrow  in  the 
light  of  new  thoughts.  People  wish  to  be  settled  ; 
only  as  far  as  they  are  unsettled  is  there  any  hope 
for  them. 

Life  is  a  series  of  surprises.  We  do  not  guess 
to-day  the  mood,  the  pleasure,  the  power  of  to-mor 
row,  when  we  are  building  up  our  being.  Of 
lower  states,  of  acts  of  routine  and  sense,  we  can 
tell  somewhat;  but  the  masterpieces  of  God,  the 
total  growths  and  universal  movements  of  the  soul, 
he  hideth  ,  they  are  incalculable.  I  can  know  that 


CIRCLES.  299 

truth  is  divine  and  helpful;  but  how  it  shall  help 
me  I  can  have  no  guess,  for  so  to  be  is  the  sole  in 
let  of  so  to  know.  The  new  position  of  the  advanc 
ing  man  has  all  the  powers  of  the  old,  yet  has  them 
all  new.  It  carries  in  its  bosom  all  the  energies  of 
the  past,  yet  is  itself  an  exhalation  of  the  morning, 
I  cast  away  in  this  new  moment  all  my  once 
hoarded  knowledge,  as  vacant  and  vain.  Now  for 
the  first  time  seem  I  to  know  any  thing  rightly. 
The  simplest  words,  — we  do  not  know  what  they 
mean  except  when  we  love  and  aspire. 

The  difference  between  talents  and  character  is 
adroitness  to  keep  the  old  and  trodden  round,  and 
power  and  courage  to  make  a  new  road  to  new  and 
better  goals.  Character  makes  an  overpowering 
present ;  a  cheerful,  determined  hour,  which  forti 
fies  all  the  company  by  making  them  see  that  much 
is  -possible  and  excellent  that  was  not  thought  of. 
Character  dulls  the  impression  of  particular  events. 
When  we  see  the  conqueror  we  do  not  think  much 
of  any  one  battle  or  success.  We  see  that  we  had 
exaggerated  the  difficulty.  It  was  easy  to  him. 
The  great  man  is  not  convulsible  or  tormentable  ; 
events  pass  over  him  without  much  impression. 
People  say  sometimes,  '  See  what  I  have  over 
come  ;  see  how  cheerful  I  am  ;  see  how  completely 
I  have  triumphed  over  these  black  events.'  Not  if 
they  still  remind  me  of  the  black  event.  True  con- 


300  CIRCLES. 

quest  is  the  causing  the  calamity  to  fade  and  disap 
pear  as  an  early  cloud  of  insignificant  result  in  a 
history  so  large  and  advancing. 

The  one  thing  which  we  seek  with  insatiable  de 
sire  is  to  forget  ourselves,  to  be  surprised  out  of  our 
propriety,  to  lose  our  sempiternal  memory  and  to 
do  something  without  knowing  how  or  why ;  in 
short  to  draw  a  new  circle.  Nothing  great  was 
ever  achieved  without  enthusiasm.  The  way  of 
life  is  wonderful ;  it  is  by  abandonment.  The  great 
moments  of  history  are  the  facilities  of  performance 
through  the  strength  of  ideas,  as  the  works  of  gen 
ius  and  religion.  "  A  man  "  said  Oliver  Cromwell 
"  never  rises  so  high  as  when  he  knows  not  whither 
he  is  going."  Dreams  and  drunkenness,  the  use  of 
opium  and  alcohol  are  the  semblance  and  counter 
feit  of  this  oracular  genius,  and  hence  their  danger 
ous  attraction  for  men.  For  the  like  reason  they 
ask  the  aid  of  wild  passions,  as  in  gaming  and  war, 
to  ape  in  some  manner  these  flames  and  generosi* 
ties  of  the  heart. 


INTELLECT. 


Go,  speed  the  stars  of  Thought 
On  to  their  shining  goals  ;  — 
The  sower  scatters  broad  his  seed; 
The  wheat  thou  strew'st  be  souls. 


XL 

INTELLECT. 


EVERY  substance  is  negatively  electric  to  that 
which  stands  above  it  in  the  chemical  tables,  posi 
tively  to  that  which  stands  below  it.  Water  dis 
solves  wood  and  iron  and  salt ;  air  dissolves  water ; 
electric  fire  dissolves  air,  but  the  intellect  dissolves 
fire,  gravity,  laws,  method,  and  the  subtlest  un 
named  relations  of  nature  in  its  resistless  men 
struum.  Intellect  lies  behind  genius,  which  is  intel 
lect  constructive.  Intellect  is  the  simple  power  an 
terior  to  all  action  or  construction.  Gladly  would 
I  unfold  in  calm  degrees  a  natural  history  of  the 
intellect,  but  what  man  has  yet  been  able  to  mark 
the  steps  and  boundaries  of  that  transparent  es 
sence?  The  first  questions  are  always  to  be  asked, 
and  the  wisest  doctor  is  gravelled  by  the  inquisi- 
tiveness  of  a  child.  How  can  we  speak  of  the  ac 
tion  of  the  mind  under  any  divisions,  as  of  its 
knowledge,  of  its  ethics,  of  its  works,  and  so  forth, 
since  it  melts  will  into  perception,  knowledge  into 
act?  Each  becomes  the  other.  Itself  alone  is, 


304  INTELLECT. 

Its  vision  is  not  like  the  vision  of  the  eye,  but  is 
union  with  the  things  known. 

Intellect  and-  intellection  signify  to  the  common 
ear  consideration  of  abstract  truth.  The  consider 
ations  of  time  and  place,  of  you  and  mo,  of  profit 
and  hurt  tyrannize  over  most  men's  minds.  Intel 
lect  separates  the  fact  considered,  from  you,  from 
all  local  and  personal  reference,  and  discerns  it  as 
if  it  existed  for  its  own  sake.  Heraclitus  looked 
upon  the  affections  as  dense  and  colored  mists.  In 
the  fog  of  good  and  evil  affections  it  is  hard  for 
man  to  walk  forward  in  a  straight  line.  Intellect 
is  void  of  affection  and  sees  an  object  as  it  stands 
in  the  light  of  science,  cool  and  disengaged.  The 
intellect  goes  out  of  the  individual,  floats  over  its 
own  personality,  and  regards  it  as  a  fact,  and  not 
as  /  and  mine.  He  who  is  immersed  in  what  con 
cerns  person  or  place  cannot  see  the  problem  of 
existence.  This  the  intellect  always  ponders.  Na 
ture  shows  all  things  formed  and  bound.  The  in 
tellect  pierces  the  form,  overleaps  the  wall,  detects 
intrinsic  likeness  between  remote  things  and  re 
duces  all  things  into  a  few  principles. 

The  making  a  fact  the  subject  of  thought  raises 
it.  All  that  mass  of  mental  and  moral  phenomena 
which  we  do  not  make  objects  of  voluntary  thought, 
come  within  the  power  of  fortune ;  they  constitute 
the  circumstance  of  daily  life ;  they  are  subject  to 


INTELLECT.  805 

change,  to  fear  and  hope.  Every  man  beholds  his 
human  condition  with  a  degree  of  melancholy.  As  a 
ship  aground  is  battered  by  the  waves,  so  man,  im 
prisoned  in  mortal  life,  lies  open  to  the  mercy  of 
coming  events.  But  a  truth,  separated  by  the  in 
tellect,  is  no  longer  a  subject  of  destiny.  We  be 
hold  it  as  a  god  upraised  above  care  and  fear. 
And  so  any  fact  in  our  life,  or  any  record  of  our 
fancies  or  reflections,  disentangled  from  the  web  of 
our  unconsciousness,  becomes  an  object  impersonal 
and  immortal.  It  is  the  past  restored,  but  em 
balmed.  A  better  art  than  that  of  Egypt  has 
taken  fear  and  corruption  out  of  it.  It  is  eviscer 
ated  of  care.  It  is  offered  for  science.  What  is 
addressed  to  us  for  contemplation  does  not  threaten 
us  but  makes  us  intellectual  beings. 

The  growth  of  the  intellect  is  spontaneous  in 
every  expansion.  The  mind  that  grows  could  not 
predict  the  times,  the  means,  the  mode  of  that  spon 
taneity.  God  enters  by  a  private  door  into  every 
individual.  Long  prior  to  the  age  of  reflection  is 
the  thinking  of  the  mind.  Out  of  darkness  it 
came  insensibly  into  the  marvellous  light  of  to-day. 
In  the  period  of  infancy  it  accepted  and  disposed 
of  all  impressions  from  the  surrounding  creation  af 
ter  its  own  way.  Whatever  any  mind  doth  or  saith 
is  after  a  law,  and  this  native  law  remains  over  it 
after  it  has  come  to  reflection  or  conscious  thought. 

VOL.  ii.  20 


306  INTELLECT. 

In  the  most  worn,  pedantic,  introverted  self-tormen 
tor's  life,  the  greatest  part  is  incalculable  by  him, 
unforeseen,  unimaginable,  and  must  be,  until  he  can 
take  himself  up  by  his  own  ears.  What  am  I  ? 
What  has  my  will  done  to  make  me  that  I  am  ? 
Nothing.  I  have  been  floated  into  this  thought, 
this  hour,  this  connection  of  events,  by  secret  cur 
rents  of  might  and  mind,  and  my  ingenuity  and 
wilfulness  have  not  thwarted,  have  not  aided  to  an 
appreciable  degree. 

Our  spontaneous  action  is  always  the  best.  You 
cannot  with  your  best  deliberation  and  heed  come 
so  close  to  any  question  as  your  spontaneous  glance 
shall  bring  you,  whilst  you  rise  from  your  bed,  or 
walk  abroad  in  the  morning  after  meditating  the 
matter  before  sleep  on  the  previous  night.  Our 
thinking  is  a  pious  reception.  Our  truth  of  thought 
is  therefore  vitiated  as  much  by  too  violent  direc 
tion  given  by  our  will,  as  by  too  great  negligence. 
We  do  not  determine  what  we  will  think.  We 
only  open  our  senses,  clear  away  as  we  can  all  ob 
struction  from  the  fact,  and  suffer  the  intellect  to 
see.  We  have  little  control  over  our  thoughts. 
We  are  the  prisoners  of  ideas.  They  catch  us  up 
for  moments  into  their  heaven  and  so  fully  engage 
us  that  we  take  no  thought  for  the  morrow,  gaze 
like  children,  without  an  effort  to  make  them  our 
own.  By  and  by  we  fall  out  of  that  rapture,  be. 


INTELLECT.  307 

think  us  where  we  have  been,  what  we  have  seen, 
and  repeat  as  truly  as  we  can  what  we  have  beheld. 
As  far  as  we  can  recall  these  ecstasies  we  carry 
away  in  the  ineffaceable  memory  the  result,  and  all 
men  and  all  the  ages  confirm  it.  It  is  called 
truth.  But  the  moment  we  cease  to  report  and  at 
tempt  to  correct  and  contrive,  it  is  not  truth. 

If  we  consider  what  persons  have  stimulated  and 
profited  us,  we  shall  perceive  the  superiority  of  the 
spontaneous  or  intuitive  principle  over  the  arith 
metical  or  logical.  The  first  contains  the  second, 
but  virtual  and  latent.  We  want  in  every  man  a 
long  logic ;  we  cannot  pardon  the  absence  of  it,  but 
it  must  not  be  spoken.  Logic  is  the  procession  or 
proportionate  unfolding  of  the  intuition  ;  but  its 
virtue  is  as  silent  method ;  the  moment  it  would 
appear  as  propositions  and  have  a  separate  value,  it 
is  worthless. 

In  every  man's  mind,  some  images,  words  and 
facts  remain,  without  effort  on  his  part  to  imprint 
them,  which  others  forget,  and  afterwards  these  il 
lustrate  to  him  important  laws.  All  our  progress 
is  an  unfolding,  like  the  vegetable  bud.  You  have 
first  an  instinct,  then  an  opinion,  then  a  knowledge, 
as  the  plant  has  root,  bud  and  fruit.  Trust  the  in 
stinct  to  the  end,  though  you  can  render  no  reason. 
It  is  vain  to  hurry  it.  By  trusting  it  to  the  end, 
it  shall  ripen  into  truth  and  you  shall  know  wiry 
you  believe. 


808  INTELLECT. 

Each  mind  has  its  own  method.  A  true  man 
never  acquires  after  college  rules.  What  you  have 
aggregated  in  a  natural  manner  surprises  and  de 
lights  when  it  is  produced.  For  we  cannot  oversee 
each  other's  secret.  And  hence  the  differences 
between  men  in  natural  endowment  are  insignifi 
cant  in  comparison  with  their  common  wealth.  Do 
you  think  the  porter  and  the  cook  have  no  anec 
dotes,  no  experiences,  no  wonders  for  you  ?  Every 
body  knows  as  much  as  the  savant.  The  walls  of 
rude  minds  are  scrawled  all  over  with  facts,  with 
thoughts.  They  shall  one  day  bring  a  lantern  and 
read  the  inscriptions.  Every  man,  in  the  degree 
in  which  he  has  wit  and  culture,  finds  his  curiosity 
inflamed  concerning  the  modes  of  living  and  think 
ing  of  other  men,  and  especially  of  those  classes 
whose  minds  have  not  been  subdued  by  the  drill  of 
school  education. 

This  instinctive  action  never  ceases  in  a  healthy 
mind,  but  becomes  richer  and  more  frequent  in  its 
informations  through  all  states  of  culture.  At  last 
comes  the  era  of  reflection,  when  we  not  only  ob 
serve,  but  take  pains  to  observe ;  when  we  of  set 
purpose  sit  down  to  consider  an  abstract  truth  • 
when  we  keep  the  mind's  eye  open  whilst  we  con 
verse,  whilst  we  read,  whilst  we  act,  intent  to  learn 
the  secret  law  of  some  class  of  facts. 

What  is  the   hardest   task   in  the  world?     To 


INTELLECT.  3C9 

think.  I  would  put  myself  in  the  attitude  to  look 
in  the  eye  an  abstract  truth,  and  I  cannot.  I  blench 
and  withdraw  on  this  side  and  on  that.  I  seem  to 
know  what  he  meant  who  said,  No  man  can  see 
God  face  to  face  and  live.  For  example,  a  man 
explores  the  basis  of  civil  government.  Let  him 
intend  his  mind  without  respite,  without  rest,  in 
one  direction.  His  best  heed  long  time  avails  him 
nothing.  Yet  thoughts  are  flitting  before  him.  We 
all  but  apprehend,  we  dimly  forebode  the  truth. 
We  say  I  will  walk  abroad,  and  the  truth  will  take 
form  and  clearness  to  me.  We  go  forth,  but  can 
not  find  it.  It  seems  as  if  we  needed  only  the 
stillness  and  composed  attitude  of  the  library  to 
seize  the  thought.  But  we  come  in,  and  are  as  far 
from  it  as  at  first.  Then,  in  a  moment,  and  unan 
nounced,  the  truth  appears.  A  certain  wandering 
light  appears,  and  is  the  distinction,  the  principle, 
we  wanted.  But  the  oracle  comes  because  we  had 
previously  laid  siege  to  the  shrine.  It  seems  as  if 
the  law  of  the  intellect  resembled  that  law  of  na 
ture  by  which  we  now  inspire,  now  expire  the 
breath  ;  by  which  the  heart  now  draws  in,  then 
hurls  out  the  blood,  —  the  law  of  undulation.  So 
now  you  must  labor  with  your  brains,  and  now  you 
must  forbear  your  activity  and  see  what  the  great 
Soul  showeth. 

The    immortality    of    man    is    as    legitimately 


310  INTELLECT. 

preached  from  the  intellections  as  from  the  moral 
volitions.  Every  intellection  is  mainly  prospective. 
Its  present  value  is  its  least.  Inspect  what  delights 
you  in  Plutarch,  in  Shakspeare,  in  Cervantes. 
Each  truth  that  a  writer  acquires  is  a  lantern  which 
he  turns  full  on  what  facts  and  thoughts  lay  already 
in  his  mind,  and  behold,  all  the  mats  and  rubbish 
which  had  littered  his  garret  become  precious. 
Every  trivial  fact  in  his  private  biography  becomes 
an  illustration  of  this  new  principle,  revisits  the 
day,  and  delights  all  men  by  its  piquancy  and  new 
charm.  Men  say,  Where  did  he  get  this  ?  and 
think  there  was  something  divine  in  his  life.  But 
no ;  they  have  myriads  of  facts  just  as  good,  would 
they  only  get  a  lamp  to  ransack  their  attics  withal. 
We  are  all  wise.  The  difference  between  per 
sons  is  not  in  wisdom  but  in  art.  I  knew,  in  an  ac 
ademical  club,  a  person  who  always  deferred  to  me ; 
who,  seeing  my  whim  for  writing,  fancied  that  my 
experiences  had  somewhat  superior ;  whilst  I  saw 
that  his  experiences  were  as  good  as  mine.  Give 
them  to  me  and  I  would  make  the  same  use  of 
them.  He  held  the  old  ;  he  holds  the  new  ;  I  had 
the  habit  of  tacking  together  the  old  and  the  new 
which  he  did  not  use  to  exercise.  This  may  hold 
in  the  great  examples.  Perhaps,  if  we  should  meet 
Shakspeare  we  should  not  be  conscious  of  any  steep 
inferiority ;  no,  but  of  a  great  equality,  —  only  that 


INTELLECT.  311 

he  possessed  a  strange  skill  of  using,  of  classify 
ing  his  facts,  which  we  lacked.  For  notwithstand 
ing  our  utter  incapacity  to  produce  anything  like 
Hamlet  and  Othello,  see  the  perfect  reception  this 
wit  and  immense  knowledge  of  life  and  liquid  elo 
quence  find  in  us  all. 

If  you  gather  apples  in  the  sunshine,  or  make 
hay,  or  hoe  corn,  and  then  retire  within  doors  and 
shut  your  eyes  and  press  them  with  your  hand,  you 
shall  still  see  apples  hanging  in  the  bright  light 
with  boughs  and  leaves  thereto,  or  the  tasselled 
grass,  or  the  corn-flags,  and  this  for  five  or  six 
hours  afterwards.  There  lie  the  impressions  on 
the  retentive  organ,  though  you  knew  it  not.  So 
lies  the  whole  series  of  natural  images  with  which 
your  life  has  made  you  acquainted,  in  your  mem 
ory,  though  you  know  it  not  >;  and  a  thrill  of  pas 
sion  flashes  light  on  their  dark  chamber,  and  the 
active  power  seizes  instantly  the  fit  image,  as  the 
word  of  its  momentary  thought. 

It  is  long  ere  we  discover  how  rich  we  are. 
Our  history,  we  are  sure,  is  quite  tame  :  we  have 
nothing  to  write,  nothing  to  infer.  But  our  wiser 
years  still  run  back  to  the  despised  recollections  of 
childhood,  and  always  we  are  fishing  up  some  won 
derful  article  out  of  that  pond  ;  until  by  and  by  we 
begin  to  suspect  that  the  biography  of  the  one  fool 
ish  person  we  know  is,  in  reality,  nothing  less  than 


312  INTELLECT. 

the  miniature  paraphrase  of  the  hundred  volumes 
of  the  Universal  History. 

In  the  intellect  constructive,  which  we  popularly 
designate  by  the  word  Genius,  we  observe  flie  same 
balance  of  two  elements  as  in  intellect  receptive. 
The  constructive  intellect  produces  thoughts,  sen- 
tences,  poems,  plans,  designs,  systems.  It  is  the 
generation  of  the  mind,  the  marriage  of  thought 
with  nature.  To  genius  must  always  go  two  gifts, 
the  thought  and  the  publication.  The  first  is  rev 
elation,  always  a  miracle,  which  no  frequency  of 
occurrence  or  incessant  study  can  ever  familiarize, 
but  which  must  always  leave  the  inquirer  stupid 
with  wonder.  It  is  the  advent  of  truth  into  the 
world,  a  form  of  thought  now  for  the  first  time 
bursting  into  the  universe,  a  child  of  the  old  eter 
nal  soul,  a  piece  of  genuine  and  immeasurable 
greatness.  It  seems,  for  the  time,  to  inherit  all 
that  has  yet  existed  and  to  dictate  to  the  unborn. 
It  affects  every  thought  of  man  and  goes  to  fash 
ion  every  institution.  But  to  make  it  available  it 
needs  a  vehicle  or  art  by  which  it  is  conveyed  to 
men.  To  be  communicable  it  must  become  picture 
or  sensible  object.  We  must  learn  the  language  of 
facts.  The  most  wonderful  inspirations  die  with 
their  subject  if  he  has  no  hand  to  paint  them  to  the 
senses.  The  ray  of  light  passes  invisible  througli 
space  and  only  when  it  falls  on  an  object  is  it  seen, 


INTELLECT.  313 

When  the  spiritual  energy  is  directed  on  something- 
outward,  then  it  is  a  thought.  The  relation  be 
tween  it  and  you  first  makes  you,  the  value  of  you, 
apparent  to  me.  The  rich  inventive  genius  of  the 
painter  must  be  smothered  and  lost  for  want  of  the 
power  of  drawing,  and  in  our  happy  hours  we 
should  be  inexhaustible  poets  if  once  we  could 
break  through  the  silence  into  adequate  rhyme. 
As  all  men  have  some  access  to  primary  truth,  so 
all  have  some  art  or  power  of  communication 
in  their  head,  but  only  in  the  artist  does  it  de 
scend  into  the  hand.  There  is  an  inequality, 
whose  laws  we  do  not  yet  know,  between  two  men 
and  between  two  moments  of  the  same  man,  in  re 
spect  to  this  faculty.  In  common  hours  we  have  the 
same  facts  as  in  the  uncommon  or  inspired,  but 
they  do  not  sit  for  their  portraits  ;  they  are  not  de 
tached,  but  lie  in  a  web.  The  thought  of  genius 
is  spontaneous  ;  but  the  power  of  picture  or  expres 
sion,  in  the  most  enriched  and  flowing  nature,  im 
plies  a  mixture  of  will,  a  certain  control  over  the 
spontaneous  states,  without  which  no  production  is 
possible.  It  is  a  conversion  of  all  nature  into  the 
rhetoric  of  thought,  under  the  eye  of  judgment, 
with  a  strenuous  exercise  of  choice.  And  yet  the 
imaginative .  vocabulary  seems  to  be  spontaneous 
also.  It  does  not  flow  from  experience  only  or 
mainly,  but  from  a  richer  source.  Not  by  any  con- 


314  INTELLECT. 

scious  imitation  of  particular  forms  are  the  grand 
strokes  of  the  painter  executed,  but  by  repairing  to 
the  fountain-head  of  all  forms  in  his  mind.  Who 
is  the  first  drawing-master  ?  Without  instruction 
we  know  very  well  the  ideal  of  the  human  form. 
A  child  knows  if  an  arm  or  a  leg  be  distorted  in  a 
picture  ;  if  the  attitude  be  natural  or  grand  or 
mean  ;  though  he  has  never  received  any  instruc 
tion  in  drawing  or  heard  any  conversation  on  the 
subject,  nor  can  himself  draw  with  correctness  a 
single  feature.  A  good  form  strikes  all  eyes  pleas 
antly,  long  before  they  have  any  science  on  the 
subject,  and  a  beautiful  face  sets  twenty  hearts  in 
palpitation,  prior  to  all  consideration  of  the  me 
chanical  proportions  of  the  features  and  head.  We 
may  owe  to  dreams  some  light  on  the  fountain  of 
this  skill ;  for  as  soon  as  we  let  our  will  go  and  let 
the  unconscious  states  ensue,  see  what  cunning 
draughtsmen  we  are  !  We  entertain  ourselves  with 
wonderful  forms  of  men,  of  women,  of  animals,  of 
gardens,  of  woods  and  of  monsters,  and  the  mystic 
pencil  wherewith  we  then  draw  has  no  awkward 
ness  or  inexperience,  no  meagreness  or  poverty  ;  it 
can  design  well  and  group  well ;  its  composition  is 
full  of  art,  its  colors  are  well  laid  on  and  the  whole 
canvas  which  it  paints  is  lifelike  and  apt  to  touch 
us  with  terror,  with  tenderness,  with  desire  and 
with  grief.  Neither  are  the  artist's  copies  from  ex- 


INTELLECT.  315 

perience  ever  mere  copies,  but  always  touched  and 
softened  by  tints  from  this  ideal  domain. 

The  conditions  essential  to  a  constructive  mind 
do  not  appear  to  be  so  often  combined  but  that  a 
good  sentence  or  verse  remains  fresh  and  memo 
rable  for  a  long  time.  Yet  when  we  write  with 
3ase  and  come  out  into  the  free  air  of  thought,  we 
seem  to  be  assured  that  nothing  is  easier  than  to 
continue  this  communication  at  pleasure.  Up, 
down,  around,  the  kingdom  of  thought  has  no  in- 
closures,  but  the  Muse  makes  us  free  of  her  city. 
Well,  the  world  has  a  million  writers.  One  would 
think  then  that  good  thought  would  be  as  familiar 
as  air  and  water,  and  the  gifts  of  each  new  hour 
would  exclude  the  last.  Yet  we  can  count  all 
our  good  books  ;  nay,  I  remember  any  beautiful 
verse  for  twenty  years.  It  is  true  that  the  discern 
ing  intellect  of  the  world  is  always  much  in  ad 
vance  of  the  creative,  so  that  there  are  many  com 
petent  judges  of  the  best  book,  and  few  writers 
of  the  best  books.  But  some  of  the  conditions  of 
intellectual  construction  are  of  rare  occurrence. 
The  intellect  is  a  whole  and  demands  integrity  in 
every  work.  This  is  resisted  equally  by  a  man's 
devotion  to  a  single  thought  and  by  his  ambition  to 
Combine  too  many. 

Truth  is  our  element  of  life,  yet  if  a  man  fasten 
iis  attention  on  a  single  aspect  of  truth  and  apply 


316  INTELLECT. 

himself  to  that  alone  for  a  long  time,  the  truth  b& 
comes  distorted  and  not  itself  but  falsehood  ;  herein 
resembling  the  air,  which  is  our  natural  element 
and  the  breath  of  our  nostrils,  but  if  a  stream  of 
the  same  be  directed  on  the  body  for  a  time,  it 
causes  cold,  fever,  and  even  death.  How  wearisome 
the  grammarian,  the  phrenologist,  the  political  or 
religious  fanatic,  or  indeed  any  possessed  mortal 
whose  balance  is  lost  by  the  exaggeration  of  a  sin 
gle  topic.  It  is  incipient  insanity.  Every  thought 
is  a  prison  also.  I  cannot  see  what  you  see,  be 
cause  I  am  caught  up  by  a  strong  wind  and  blown 
so  far  in  one  direction  that  I  am  out  of  the  hoop  of 
your  horizon. 

Is  it  any  better  if  the  student,  to  avoid  this  of 
fence  and  to  liberalize  himself,  aims  to  make  a  me 
chanical  whole  of  history,  or  science,  or  philosophy, 
by  a  numerical  addition  of  all  the  facts  that  fall 
within  his  vision  ?  The  world  refuses  to  be  ana 
lyzed  by  addition  and  subtraction.  When  we  are 
young  we  spend  much  time  and  pains  in  filling  our 
note-books  with  all  definitions  of  Religion,  Love. 
Poetry,  Politics,  Art,  in  the  hope  that  in  the  course 
of  a  few  years  we  shall  have  condensed  into  our  en 
cyclopaedia  the  net  value  of  all  the  theories  at  which 
the  world  has  yet  arrived.  But  year  after  year  our 
tables  get  no  completeness,  and  at  last  we  discover 
that  our  curve  is  a  parabola,  whose  arcs  will  never 
meet. 


INTELLECT.  317 

Neither  by  detachment  neither  by  aggregation 
is  the  integrity  of  the  intellect  transmitted  to  its 
works,  but  by  a  vigilance  which  brings  the  intel 
lect  in  its  greatness  and  best  state  to  operate  every 
moment.  It  must  have  the  same  wholeness  which 
nature  has.  Although  no  diligence  can  rebuild  the 
universe  in  a  model  by  the  best  accumulation  or 
disposition  of  details,  yet  does  the  world  reappear 
in  miniature  in  every  event,  so  that  all  the  laws  of 
nature  may  be  read  in  the  smallest  fact.  The  in 
tellect  must  have  the  like  perfection  in  its  appre 
hension  and  in  its  works.  For  this  reason,  an  in 
dex  or  mercury  of  intellectual  proficiency  is  the  per 
ception  of  identity.  We  talk  with  accomplished 
persons  who  appear  to  be  strangers  in  nature.  The 
cloud,  the  tree,  the  turf,  the  bird,  are  not  theirs, 
have  nothing  of  them  ;  the  world  is  only  their  lodg 
ing  and  table.  But  the  poet,  whose  verses  are  to 
be  spheral  and  complete,  is  one  whom  Nature  can 
not  deceive,  whatsoever  face  of  strangeness  she  may 
put  on.  He  feels  a  strict  consanguinity,  and  de 
tects  more  likeness  than  variety  in  all  her  changes. 
We  are  stung  by  the  desire  for  new  thought ;  but 
when  we  receive  a  new  thought  it  is  only  the  old 
thought  with  a  new  face,  and  though  we  make  it 
our  own  we  instantly  crave  another ;  we  are  not 
really  enriched.  For  the  truth  was  in  us  before  it 
was  reflected  to  us  from  natural  objects ;  and  the 


318  INTELLECT. 

profound  genius  will  cast  the  likeness  of  all  crea« 
tures  into  every  product  of  his  wit. 

But  if  the  constructive  powers  are  rare  and  it  is 
given  to  few  men  to  be  poets,  yet  every  man  is  a 
receiver  of  this  descending  holy  ghost,  and  may 
well  study  the  laws  of  its  influx.  Exactly  parallel 
is  the  whole  rule  of  intellectual  duty  to  the  rule  of 
moral  duty.  A  self-denial  no  less  austere  than  the 
saint's  is  demanded  of  the  scholar.  He  must  wor 
ship  truth,  and  forego  all  things  for  that,  and 
choose  defeat  and  pain,  so  that  his  treasure  in 
thought  is  thereby  augmented. 

God  offers  to  every  mind  its  choice  between  truth 
and  repose.  Take  which  you  please,  —  you  can 
never  have  both.  Between  these,  as  a  pendulum, 
man  oscillates.  He  in  whom  the  love  of  repose  pre 
dominates  will  accept  the  first  creed,  the  first  phi 
losophy,  the  first  political  party  he  meets,  —  most 
likely  his  father's.  He  gets  rest,  commodity  and 
reputation  ;  but  he  shuts  the  door  of  truth.  He  in 
whom  the  love  of  truth  predominates  will  keep  him 
self  aloof  from  all  moorings,  and  afloat.  He  will 
abstain  from  dogmatism,  and  recognize  all  the  op 
posite  negations  between  which,  as  walls,  his  being 
is  swung.  He  submits  to  the  inconvenience  of  sus 
pense  and  imperfect  opinion,  but  he  is  a  candidate 
for  truth,  as  the  other  is  not,  and  respects  the  high 
est  law  of  his  being. 


INTELLECT.  319 

The  circle  of  the  green  earth  he  must  measure 
with  his  shoes  to  find  the  man  who  can  yield  him 
truth.  lie  shall  then  know  that  there  is  somewhat 
more  blessed  and  great  in  hearing  than  in  speaking. 
Happy  is  the  hearing  man  ;  unhappy  the  speaking 
man.  As  long  as  I  hear  truth  I  am  bathed  by  a 
beautiful  element  and  am  not  conscious  of  any  lim 
its  to  my  nature.  The  suggestions  are  thousand 
fold  that  I  hear  and  see.  The  waters  of  the  great 
deep  have  ingress  and  egress  to  the  soul.  But  if  I 
speak,  I  define,  I  confine  and  am  less.  When  Soc 
rates  speaks,  Lysis  and  Menexenus  are  afflicted  by 
no  shame  that  they  do  not  speak.  They  also  are 
good.  He  likewise  defers  to  them,  loves  them, 
whilst  he  speaks.  Because  a  true  and  natural  man 
contains  and  is  the  same  truth  which  an  eloquent 
man  articulates  ;  but  in  the  eloquent  man,  because 
he  can  articulate  it,  it  seems  something  the  less  to 
reside,  and  he  turns  to  these  silent  beautiful  with 
the  more  inclination  and  respect.  The  ancient  sen 
tence  said,  Let  us  be  silent,  for  so  are  the  gods. 
Silence  is  a  solvent  that  destroys  personality,  and 
gives  us  leave  to  be  great  and  universal.  Every 
man's  progress  is  through  a  succession  of  teachers, 
each  of  whom  seems  at  the  time  to  have  a  superla 
tive  influence,  but  it  at  last  gives  place  to  a  new. 
Frankly  let  him  accept  it  all.  Jesus  says,  Leave 
father,  mother,  house  and  lands,  and  follow  me. 


320  INTELLECT. 

Who  leaves  all,  receives  more.  This  is  as  true  in 
tellectually  as  morally.  Each  new  mind  we  ap 
proach  seems  to  require  an  abdication  of  all  our 
past  and  present  possessions.  A  new  doctrine 
seems  at  first  a  subversion  of  all  our  opinions, 
tastes,  and  manner  of  living.  Such  has  Sweden- 
borg,  such  has  Kant,  such  has  Coleridge,  such  has 
Hegel  or  his  interpreter  Cousin  seemed  to  many 
young  men  in  this  country.  Take  thankfully  and 
heartily  all  they  can  give.  Exhaust  them,  wrestle 
with  them,  let  them  not  go  until  their  blessing  be 
won,  and  after  a  short  season  the  dismay  will  be 
overpast,  the  excess  of  influence  withdrawn,  and 
they  will  be  no  longer  an  alarming  meteor,  but  one 
more  bright  star  shining  serenely  in  your  heaven 
and  blending  its  light  with  all  your  day. 

But  whilst  he  gives  himself  up  unreservedly  to 
that  which  draws  him,  because  that  is  his  own,  he 
is  to  refuse  himself  to  that  which  draws  him  not, 
whatsoever  fame  and  authority  may  attend  it,  be 
cause  it  is  not  his  own.  Entire  self-reliance  be 
longs  to  the  intellect.  One  soul  is  a  counterpoise 
of  all  souls,  as  a  capillary  column  of  water  is  a  bal 
ance  for  the  sea.  It  must  treat  things  and  books 
and  sovereign  genius  as  itself  also  a  sovereign.  If 
.ZEschylus  be  that  man  he  is  taken  for,  he  has  not 
yet  done  his  office  when  he  has  educated  the  learned 
of  Europe  for  a  thousand  years.  He  is  now  to  ap- 


INTELLECT.  321 

prove  himself  a  master  of  delight  to  me  also.  It 
he  cannot  do  that,  all  his  fame  shall  avail  him  noth 
ing  with  me.  I  were  a  fool  not  to  sacrifice  a  thou 
sand  JEschyluses  to  my  intellectual  integrity.  Es 
pecially  take  the  same  ground  in  regard  to  abstract 
truth,  the  science  of  the  mind.  The  Bacon,  the 
Spinoza,  the  Hume,  Schelling,  Kant,  or  whosoever 
propounds  to  you  a  philosophy  of  the  mind,  is  only 
a  more  or  less  awkward  translator  of  things  in  your 
consciousness  which  you  have  also  your  way  of  see 
ing,  perhaps  of  denominating.  Say  then,  instead 
of  too  timidly  poring  into  his  obscure  sense,  that 
he  has  not  succeeded  in  rendering  back  to  you  your 
consciousness.  He  has  not  succeeded  ;  now  let  an- 
other  try.  If  Plato  cannot,  perhaps  Spinoza  will. 
If  Spinoza  cannot,  then  perhaps  Kant.  Anyhow, 
when  at  last  it  is  done,  you  will  find  it  is  no  recon 
dite,  but  a  simple,  natural,  common  state  which  the 
writer  restores  to  you. 

But  let  us  end  these  didactics.  I  will  not,  though 
the  subject  might  provoke  it,  speak  to  the  open 
question  between  Truth  and  Love.  I  shall  not  pre 
sume  to  interfere  in  the  old  politics  of  the  skies ;  — - 
"  The  cherubim  know  most ;  the  seraphim  love 
most."  The  gods  shall  settle  their  own  quarrels. 
But  I  cannot  recite,  even  thus  rudely,  laws  of  the 
intellect,  without  remembering  that  lofty  and  se 
questered  class  who  have  been  its  prophets  and  ora- 

VOL.  II.  21 


322  INTELLECT. 

eles,  the  high-priesthood  of  the  pure  reason,  the 
Trismcgisli,  the  expounders  of  the  principles  of 
thought  from  age  to  age.  When  at  long  intervals 
we  turn  over  their  abstruse  pages,  wonderful  seems 
tho  calm  and  grand  air  of  these  few,  these  great 
spiritual  lords  who  have  walked  in  the  world,  — 
these  of  the  old  religion,  —  dwelling  in  a  worship 
which  makes  the  sanctities  of  Christianity  look  par- 
venues  and  popular  ;  for  "  persuasion  is  in  soul, 
but  necessity  is  in  intellect."  This  band  of  gran 
dees,  Hermes,  Heraclitus,  Empedocles,  Plato,  Plo- 
tinus,  Olympiodorus,  Proclus,  Synesius  and  the 
rest,  have  somewhat  so  vast  in  their  logic,  so  pri 
mary  in  their  thinking,  that  it  seems  antecedent  to 
all  the  ordinary  distinctions  of  rhetoric  and  litera 
ture,  and  to  be  at  once  poetry  and  music  and  danc 
ing  and  astronomy  and  mathematics.  I  am  present 
at  the  sowing  of  the  seed  of  the  world.  With  a 
geometry  of  sunbeams  the  soul  lays  the  foundations 
of  nature.  The  truth  and  grandeur  of  their  thought 
is  proved  by  its  scope  and  applicability,  for  it  com 
mands  the  entire  schedule  and  inventory  of  things 
for  its  illustration.  But  what  marks  its  elevation 
and  has  even  a  comic  look  to  us,  is  the  innocent  se 
renity  with  which  these  babe -like  Jupiters  sit  in 
their  clouds,  and  from  age  to  age  prattle  to  each 
other  and  to  no  contemporary.  Well  assured  that 
their  speech  is  intelligible  and  the  most  natural 


INTELLECT.  323 

thing  in  the  world,  they  add  thesis  to  thesis,  with 
out  a  moment's  heed  of  the  universal  astonishment 
of  the  human  race  below,  who  do  not  comprehend 
their  plainest  argument ;  nor  do  they  ever  relent  so 
much  as  to  insert  a  popular  or  explaining  sentence, 
nor  testify  the  least  displeasure  or  petulance  at  the 
dulness  of  their  amazed  auditory.  The  angels  are 
so  enamored  of  the  language  that  is  spoken  in 
heaven  that  they  will  not  distort  their  lips  with  the 
hissing  and  unmusical  dialects  of  men,  but  speak 
their  own,  whether  there  be  any  who  understand  it 
or  not. 


ART. 


Give  to  barrows  trays  and  pans 
Grace  and  glimmer  of  romance, 
Bring  the  moonlight  into  noon 
Hid  in  gleaming  piles  of  stone  ; 
On  the  city's  paved  street 
Plant  gardens  lined  with  lilac  sweety 
Let  spouting  fountains  cool  the  air, 
Singing  in  the  sun-baked  square. 
Let  statue,  picture,  park  and  hall, 
Ballad,  flag  and  festival. 
The  past  restore,  the  day  adorn 
And  make  each  morrow  a  new  morn 
So  shall  the  drudge  in  dusty  frock 
Spy  behind  the  city  clods 
Retinues  of  airy  kings, 
Skirts  of  angels,  starry  wings, 
His  fathers  shining  in  bright  fables, 
His  children  fed  at  heavenly  tables. 
'  T  is  the  privilege  of  Art 
Thus  to  play  its  cheerful  part, 
Man  in  Earth  to  acclimate 
And  bend  the  exile  to  his  fate, 
And,  moulded  of  one  element 
With  the  days  and  firmament, 
Teach  him  on  these  as  stairs  to  climb 
And  live  on  even  terms  with  Time ; 
Whilst  upper  life  the  slender  rill 
Of  human  sense  doth  overfill. 


XII. 
ART. 


BECAUSE  the  soul  is  progressive,  it  never  quite 
repeats  itself,  but  in  every  act  attempts  the  produc 
tion  of  a  new  and  fairer  whole.  This  appears  in 
works  both  of  the  useful  and  fine  arts,  if  we  employ 
the  popular  distinction  of  works  according  to  their 
aim  either  at  use  or  beauty.  Thus  in  our  fine  arts, 
not  imitation  but  creation  is  the  aim.  In  land 
scapes  the  painter  should  give  the  suggestion  of  a 
fairer  creation  than  we  know.  The  details,  the 
prose  of  nature  he  should  omit  and  give  us  only  the 
spirit  and  splendor.  He  should  know  that  the 
landscape  has  beauty  for  his  eye  because  it  ex 
presses  a  thought  which  is  to  him  good ;  and  this 
because  the  same  power  which  sees  through  his 
eyes  is  seen  in  that  spectacle ;  and  he  will  come  to 
value  the  expression  of  nature  and  not  nature  itself, 
and  so  exalt  in  his  copy  the  features  that  please 
him.  He  will  give  the  gloom  of  gloom  and  the 
sunshine  of  sunshine.  In  a  portrait  he  must  in 
scribe  the  character  and  not  the  features,  and  must 
esteem  the  man  who  sits  to  him  as  himself  only  an 


328  ART. 

imperfect  picture  or  likeness  of  the  aspiring  origi 
nal  within. 

What  is  that  abridgment  and  selection  we  ob 
serve  in  all  spiritual  activity,  but  itself  the  crea 
tive  impulse?  for  it  is  the  inlet  of  that  higher  illu 
mination  which  teaches  to  convey  a  larger  sense 
by  simpler  symbols.  What  is  a  man  but  nature's 
finer  success  in  self -explication  ?  What  is  a  man 
but  a  finer  and  compacter  landscape  than  the  hori 
zon  figures,  —  nature's  eclecticism  ?  and  what  is  his 
speech,  his  love  of  painting,  love  of  nature,  but  a 
still  finer  success,  —  all  the  weary  miles  and  tons 
of  space  and  bulk  left  out.  and  the  spirit  or  moral 
of  it  contracted  into  a  musical  word,  or  the  most 
cunning  stroke  of  the  pencil? 

But  the  artist  must  employ  the  symbols  in  use  in 
his  day  and  nation  to  convey  his  enlarged  sense  to 
his  fellow-men.  Thus  the  new  in  art  is  always 
formed  out  of  the  old.  The  Genius  of  the  Hour 
sets  his  ineffaceable  seal  on  the  work  and  gives  it 
an  inexpressible  charm  for  the  imagination.  As 
far  as  the  spiritual  character  of  the  period  over 
powers  the  artist  and  finds  expression  in  his  work, 
so  far  it  will  retain  a  certain  grandeur,  and  will 
represent  to  future  beholders  the  Unknown,  the  In 
evitable,  the  Divine.  No  man  can  quite  exclude 
this  element  of  Necessity  from  his  labor.  No  man 
?an  quite  emancipate  himself  from  his  age  and 


ART.  329 

country,  or  produce  a  model  in  which  the  educa 
tion,  the  religion,  the  politics,  usages  and  arts  of  his 
times  shall  have  no  share.  Though  he  were  never 
so  original,  never  so  wilful  and  fantastic,  he  cannot 
wipe  out  of  his  work  every  trace  of  the  thoughts 
amidst  which  it  grew.  The  very  avoidance  betrays 
the  usage  he  avoids.  Above  his  will  and  out  of  his 
sight  he  is  necessitated  by  the  air  he  breathes  and 
the  idea  on  which  he  and  his  contemporaries  live 
and  toil,  to  share  the  manner  of  his  times,  without 
knowing  what  that  manner  is.  Now  that  which  is 
inevitable  in  the  work  has  a  higher  charm  than  in 
dividual  talent  can  ever  give,  inasmuch  as  the  ar 
tist's  pen  or  chisel  seems  to  have  been  held  and 
guided  by  a  gigantic  hand  to  inscribe  a  line  in  the 
history  of  the  human  race.  This  circumstance 
gives  a  value  to  the  Egyptian  hieroglyphics,  to  the 
Indian,  Chinese  and  Mexican  idols,  however  gross 
and  shapeless.  They  denote  the  height  of  the  hu 
man  soul  in  that  hour,  and  were  not  fantastic,  but 
sprung  from  a  necessity  as  deep  as  the  world. 
Shall  I  now  add  that  the  whole  extant  product  of 
the  plastic  arts  has  herein  its  highest  value,  as  his 
tory  ;  as  a  stroke  drawn  in  the  portrait  of  that  fate, 
perfect  and  beautiful,  according  to  whose  ordina 
tions  all  beings  advance  to  their  beatitude  ? 

Thus,  historically  viewed,  it  has  been  the  office 
of  art  to  educate  the  perception  of  beauty.    We  are 


330  ART 

immersed  in  beauty,  but  our  eyes  have  no  clear  vi 
sion.  It  needs,  by  the  exhibition  of  single  traits,  to 
assist  and  lead  the  dormant  taste.  We  carve  and 
paint,  or  we  behold  what  is  carved  and  painted,  as 
students  of  the  mystery  of  Form.  The  virtue  of 
art  lies  in  detachment,  in  sequestering  one  object 
from  the  embarrassing  variety.  Until  one  thing 
comes  out  from  the  connection  of  things,  there  can 
be  enjoyment,  contemplation,  but  no  thought.  Our 
happiness  and  unhappiness  are  unproductive.  The 
infant  lies  in  a  pleasing  trance,  but  his  individual 
character  and  his  practical  power  depend  on  his 
daily  progress  in  the  separation  of  things,  and  deal 
ing  with  one  at  a  time.  Love  and  all  the  passions 
concentrate  all  existence  around  a  single  form.  It 
is  the  habit  of  certain  minds  to  give  an  all-exclud 
ing  fulness  to  the  object,  the  thought,  the  word 
they  alight  upon,  and  to  make  that  for  the  time  the 
deputy  of  the  world.  These  are  the  artists,  the  or 
ators,  the  leaders  of  society.  The  power  to  detach 
and  to  magnify  by  detaching  is  the  essence  of  rhet 
oric  in  the  hands  of  the  orator  and  the  poet.  This 
rhetoric,  or  power  to  fix  the  momentary  eminency 
of  an  object,  —  so  remarkable  in  Burke,  in  Byron, 
in  Carlyle,  —  the  painter  and  sculptor  exhibit  in 
color  and  in  stone.  The  power  depends  on  the 
depth  of  the  artist's  insight  of  that  object  he  con 
templates.  For  every  object  has  its  roots  in  cen- 


ART.  331 

fcral  nature,  and  may  of  course  be  so  exhibited  to 
us  as  to  represent  the  world.  Therefore  each  work 
of  genius  is  the  tyrant  of  the  hour  and  concentrates 
attention  on  itself.  For  the  time,  it  is  the  only 
thing  worth  naming  to  do  that,  —  be  it  a  sonnet,  an 
opera,  a  landscape,  a  statue,  an  oration,  the  plan 
of  a  temple,  of  a  campaign,  or  of  a  voyage  of  dis 
covery.  Presently  we  pass  to  some  other  object, 
which  rounds  itself  into  a  whole  as  did  the  first  ; 
for  example  a  well-laid  garden  ;  and  nothing  seems 
worth  doing  but  the  laying  out  of  gardens.  I 
should  think  fire  the  best  thing  in  the  world,  if  I 
were  not  acquainted  with  air,  and  water,  and  earth. 
For  it  is  the  right  and  property  of  all  natural  ob 
jects,  of  all  genuine  talents,  of  all  native  properties 
whatsoever,  to  be  for  their  moment  the  top  of  the 
world.  A  squirrel  leaping  from  bough  to  bough 
and  making  the  wood  but  one  wide  tree  for  his 
pleasure,  fills  the  eye  not  less  than  a  lion,  —  is 
beautiful,  self-sufficing,  and  stands  then  and  there 
for  nature.  A  good  ballad  draws  my  ear  and 
heart  whilst  I  listen,  as  much  as  an  epic  has  done 
before.  A  dog,  drawn  by  a  master,  or  a  litter  of 
pigs,  satisfies  and  is  a  reality  not  less  than  than  the 
frescoes  of  Angelo.  From  this  succession  of  excel 
lent  objects  we  learn  at  last  the  immensity  of  the 
world,  the  opulence  of  human  nature,  which  can 
run  out  to  infinitude  in  any  direction.  But  I  also 


332  ART. 

learn  that  what  astonished  and  fascinated  me  in 
the  first  work,  astonished  me  in  the  second  work 
also ;  that  excellence  of  all  things  is  one. 

The  office  of  painting  and  sculpture  seems  to  be 
merely  initial.  The  best  pictures  can  easily  tell 
us  their  last  secret.  The  best  pictures  are  rude 
draughts  of  a  few  of  the  miraculous  dots  and  lines 
and  dyes  which  make  up  the  ever-changing  "  land 
scape  with  figures  "  amidst  which  we  dwell.  Paint 
ing  seems  to  be  to  the  eye  what  dancing  is  to  the 
limbs.  When  that  has  educated  the  frame  to 
self-possession,  to  nimbleness,  to  grace,  the  steps 
of  the  dancing-master  are  better  forgotten ;  so 
painting  teaches  me  the  splendor  of  color  and  the 
expression  of  form,  and  as  I  see  many  pictures 
and  higher  genius  in  the  art,  I  see  the  bound 
less  opulence  of  the  pencil,  the  indifferency  in 
which  the  artist  stands  free  to  choose  out  of  the 
possible  forms.  If  he  can  draw  every  thing,  why 
draw' any  thing  ?  and  then  is  my  eye  opened  to  the 
eternal  picture  which  nature  paints  in  the  street, 
with  moving  men  and  children,  beggars  and  fine 
ladies,  draped  in  red  and  green  and  blue  and  gray  ; 
long-haired,  grizzled,  white-faced,  black-faced,  wrin 
kled,  giant,  dwarf,  expanded,  elfish,  —  capped  and 
based  by  heaven,  earth  and  sea. 

A  gallery  of  sculpture  teaches  more  austerely 
the  same  lesson.  As  picture  teaches  the  coloring, 


ART.  333 

so  sculpture  the  anatomy  of  form.  When  I  have 
seen  fine  statues  and  afterwards  enter  a  public  as 
sembly,  I  understand  well  what  he  meant  who  said, 
"  When  I  have  been  reading  Homer,  all  men  look 
like  giants."  I  too  see  that  painting  and  sculpture 
are  gymnastics  of  the  eye,  its  training  to  the  nice 
ties  and  curiosities  of  its  function.  There  is  nc 
statue  like  this  living  man,  with  his  infinite  advan 
tage  over  all  ideal  sculpture,  of  perpetual  variety. 
What  a  gallery  of  art  have  I  here  !  No  mannerist 
made  these  varied  groups  and  diverse  original  sin 
gle  figures.  Here  is  the  artist  himself  improvising, 
grim  and  glad,  at  his  block.  Now  one  thought 
strikes  him,  now  another,  and  with  each  moment 
he  alters  the  whole  air,  attitude  and  expression  of 
his  clay.  Away  with  your  nonsense  of  oil  and  ea 
sels,  of  marble  and  chisels  ;  except  to  open  your  eyes 
to  the  masteries  of  eternal  art,  they  are  hypocritical 
rubbish. 

The  reference  of  all  production  at  last  to  an  abo 
riginal  Power  explains  the  traits  common  to  all 
works  of  the  highest  art,  —  that  they  are  univer 
sally  intelligible ;  that  they  restore  to  us  the  sim 
plest  states  of  mind,  and  are  religious.  Since  what 
skill  is  therein  shown  is  the  reappearance  of  the 
original  soul,  a  jet  of  pure  light,  it  should  produce  a 
similar  impression  to  that  made  by  natural  objects. 
In  happy  hours,  nature  appears  to  us  one  with  art ; 


334  ART. 

art  perfected,  —  the  work  of  genius.  And  the  iiv 
dividual  in  whom  simple  tastes  arid  susceptibility 
to  all  the  great  human  influences  overpower  the  ac 
cidents  of  a  local  and  special  culture,  is  the  best 
critic  of  art.  Though  we  travel  the  world  over  to 
find  the  beautiful,  we  must  carry  it  with  us,  or  we 
find  it  not.  The  best  of  beauty  is  a  finer  charm 
than  skill  in  surfaces,  in  outlines,  or  rules  of  art  can 
ever  teach,  namely  a  radiation  from  the  work  of 
art,  of  human  character,  —  a  wonderful  expression 
through  stone,  or  canvas,  or  musical  sound,  of  the 
deepest  and  simplest  attributes  of  our  nature,  and 
therefore  most  intelligible  at  last  to  those  souls 
which  have  these  attributes.  In  the  sculptures  of 
the  Greeks,  in  the  masonry  of  the  Romans,  and  in 
the  pictures  of  the  Tuscan  and  Venetian  masters, 
the  highest  charm  is  the  universal  language  they 
speak.  A  confession  of  moral  nature,  of  purity, 
love,  and  hope,  breathes  from  them  all.  That 
which  we  carry  to  them,  the  same  we  bring  back 
more  fairly  illustrated  in  the  memory.  The  travel 
ler  who  visits  the  Vatican  and  passes  from  cham 
ber  to  chamber  through  galleries  of  statues,  vases, 
sarcophagi  and  candelabra,  through  all  forms  of 
beauty  cut  in  the  richest  materials,  is  in  danger 
of  forgetting  the  simplicity  of  the  principles  out  of 
which  they  all  sprung,  and  that  they  had  their  ori 
gin  from  thoughts  and  laws  in  his  own  breast.  He 


ART.  335 

studies  the  technical  rules  on  these  wonderful  re 
mains,  but  forgets  that  these  works  were  not  al 
ways  thus  constellated  ;  that  they  are  the  contribu 
tions  of  many  ages  and  many  countries  ;  that  each 
came  out  of  the  solitary  workshop  of  one  artist, 
who  toiled  perhaps  in  ignorance  of  the  existence 
of  other  sculpture,  created  his  work  without  other 
model  save  life,  household  life,  and  the  sweet  and 
smart  of  personal  relations,  of  beating  hearts,  and 
meeting  eyes ;  of  poverty  and  necessity  and  hope 
and  fear.  These  were  his  inspirations,  and  these 
are  the  effects  he  carries  home  to  your  heart  and 
mind.  In  proportion  to  his  force,  the  artist  will 
find  in  his  work  an  outlet  for  his  proper  character. 
He  must  not  be  in  any  manner  pinched  or  hin 
dered  by  his  material,  but  through  his  necessity  of. 
imparting  himself  the  adamant  will  be  wax  in  his 
hands,  and  will  allow  an  adequate  communication 
of  himself,  in  his  full  stature  and  proportion.  He 
need  not  cumber  himself  with  a  conventional  na 
ture  and  culture,  nor  ask  what  is  the  mode  in  Rome 
or  in  Paris,  but  that  house  and  weather  and  manner 
of  living  which  poverty  and  the  fate  of  birth  have 
made  at  once  so  odious  and  so  dear,  in  the  gray  un- 
painted  wood  cabin,  on  the  corner  of  a  New  Harnp- 
shire  farm,  or  in  the  log-hut  of  the  backwoods,  or 
in  the  narrow  lodging  where  he  has  endured  the 
constraints  and  seeming  of  a  city  poverty,  will 


ART. 

serve  as  well  as  any  other  condition  as  the  symbol 
of  a  thought  which  pours  itself  indifferently  through 
aU. 

I  remember  when  in  my  younger  days  I  had 
heard  of  the  wonders  of  Italian  painting,  I  fancied 
the  great  pictures  would  be  great  strangers ;  some 
surprising  combination  of  color  and  form  ;  a  for 
eign  wonder,  barbaric  pearl  and  gold,  like  the  spon- 
toons  and  standards  of  the  militia,  which  play  such 
pranks  in  the  eyes  and  imaginations  of  school-boys. 
I  was  to  see  and  acquire  I  knew  not  what.  When 
I  came  at  last  to  Rome  and  saw  with  eyes  the  pic 
tures,  I  found  that  genius  left  to  novices  the  gay 
and  fantastic  and  ostentatious,  and  itself  pierced 
directly  to  the  simple  and  true  ;  that  it  was  famil 
iar  and  sincere  ;  that  it  was  the  old,  eternal  fact  I 
had  met  already  in  so  many  forms,  —  unto  which 
I  lived  ;  that  it  was  the  plain  you  and  me  I  knew 
so  well,  —  had  left  at  home  in  so  many  conversa 
tions.  I  had  the  same  experience  already  in  a 
church  at  Naples.  There  I  saw  that  nothing  was 
changed  with  me  but  the  place,  and  said  to  myself 
— '  Thou  foolish  child,  hast  thou  come  out  hither, 
over  four  thousand  miles  of  salt  water,  to  find  that 
which  was  perfect  to  thee  there  at  home  ?  '  That 
fact  I  saw  again  in  the  Academmia  at  Naples,  in  the 
chambers  of  sculpture,  and  yet  again  when  I  camo 
to  Rome  and  to  the  paintings  of  Raphael,  Angela 


ART.  337 

Sacchi,  Titian,  and  Leonardo  da  Vinci.  "  What, 
old  mole  !  workest  thou  in  the  earth  so  fast  ?  "  It 
had  travelled  by  my  side ;  that  which  I  fancied  I 
had  left  in  Boston  was  here  in  the  Vatican,  and 
again  at  Milan  and  at  Paris,  and  made  all  travel 
ling  ridiculous  as  a  treadmill.  I  now  require  this 
of  all  pictures,  that  they  domesticate  me,  not  that 
they  dazzle  me.  Pictures  must  not  be  too  pictur 
esque.  Nothing  astonishes  men  so  much  as  com 
mon-sense  and  plain  dealing.  All  great  actions 
have  been  simple,  and  all  great  pictures  are. 

The  Transfiguration,  by  Raphael,  is  an  eminent 
example  of  this  peculiar  merit.  A  calm  benignant 
beauty  shines  over  all  this  picture,  and  goes  directly 
to  the  heart.  It  seems  almost  to  call  you  by  name. 
The  sweet  and  sublime  face  of  Jesus  is  beyond 
praise,  yet  how  it  disappoints  all  florid  expecta 
tions  !  This  familiar,  simple,  home-speaking  coun 
tenance  is  as  if  one  should  meet  a  friend.  The 
knowledge  of  picture  -  dealers  has  its  value,  but 
listen  not  to  their  criticism  when  your  heart  is 
touched  by  genius.  It  was  not  painted  for  them, 
it  was  painted  for  you  ;  for  such  as  had  eyes  capa 
ble  of  being  touched  by  simplicity  and  lofty  emo 
tions. 

Yet  when  we  have  said  all  our  fine  things  about 
the  arts,  we  must  end  with  a  frank  confession  that 
the  arts,  as  we  know  them,  are  but  initial.  Our 

VOL.  xi.  22 


338  ART. 

best  praise  is  given  to  what  they  aimed  and  prom* 
ised,  not  to  the  actual  result.  He  has  conceived 
meanly  of  the  resources  of  man,  who  believes  that 
the  best  age  of  production  is  past.  The  real  value 
of  the  Iliad  or  the  Transfiguration  is  as  signs  of 
power ;  billows  or  ripples  they  are  of  the  stream 
of  tendency  ;  tokens  of  the  everlasting  effort  to  pro- 
duce,  which  even  in  its  worst  estate  the  soul  betrays. 
Art  has  not  yet  come  to  its  maturity  if  it  do  not 
put  itself  abreast  with  the  most  potent  influences  of 
the  world,  if  it  is  not  practical  and  moral,  if  it  do 
not  stand  in  connection  with  the  conscience,  if  it  do 
not  make  the  poor  and  uncultivated  feel  that  it  ad 
dresses  them  with  a  voice  of  lofty  cheer.  There  is 
higher  work  for  Art  than  the  arts.  They  are  abor 
tive  births  of  an  imperfect  or  vitiated  instinct.  Art 
is  the  need  to  create ;  but  in  its  essence,  immense 
and  universal,  it  is  impatient  of  working  with  lame 
or  tied  hands,  and  of  making  cripples  and  mon 
sters,  such  as  all  pictures  and  statues  are.  Nothing 
less  than  the  creation  of  man  and  nature  is  its  end. 
A  man  should  find  in  it  an  outlet  for  his  whole  en 
ergy.  He  may  paint  and  carve  only  as  long  as  he 
can  do  that.  Art  should  exhilarate,  and  throw 
down  the  walls  of  circumstance  on  every  side, 
Awakening  in  the  beholder  the  same  sense  of  uni 
versal  relation  and  power  which  the  work  evinced 
in  the  artist,  and  its  highest  effect  is  to  make  ne\f 
artists. 


ART.  339 

Already  History  is  old  enough  to  witness  the  old 
age  and  disappearance  of  particular  arts.  The  art 
of  sculpture  is  long  ago  perished  to  any  real  effect. 
It  was  originally  a  useful  art,  a  mode  of  writing,  a 
savage's  record  of  gratitude  or  devotion,  and  among 
a  people  possessed  of  a  wonderful  perception  of 
form  this  childish  carving  was  refined  to  the  utmost 
splendor  of  effect.  But  it  is  the  game  of  a  rude 
and  youthful  people,  and  not  the  manly  labor  of 
a  wise  and  spiritual  nation.  Under  an  oak-tree 
loaded  with  leaves  and  nuts,  under  a  sky  full  of 
eternal  eyes,  I  stand  in  a  thoroughfare  ;  but  in  the 
works  of  our  plastic  arts  and  especially  of  sculp 
ture,  creation  is  driven  into  a  corner.  I  cannot  hide 
from  myself  that  there  is  a  certain  appearance  of 
paltriness,  as  of  toys  and  the  trumpery  of  a  theatre, 
in  sculpture.  Nature  transcends  all  our  moods  of 
thought,  and  its  secret  we  do  not  yet  find.  But  the 
gallery  stands  at  the  mercy  of  our  moods,  and  there 
is  a  moment  when  it  becomes  frivolous.  I  do  not 
wonder  that  Newton,  with  an  attention  habitually 
engaged  on  the  paths  of  planets  and  suns,  should 
have  wondered  what  the  Earl  of  Pembroke  found 
to  admire  in  "  stone  dolls."  Sculpture  may  serve 
to  teach  the  pupil  how  deep  is  the  secret  of  form, 
how  purely  the  spirit  can  translate  its  meanings 
into  that  eloquent  dialect.  But  the  statue  will  look 
eold  and  false  before  that  new  activity  which  needs 


840  ART. 

to  roll  through  all  things,  and  is  impatient  of  coun« 
terfeits  and  things  not  alive.  Picture  and  sculp* 
ture  are  the  celebrations  and  festivities  of  form. 
But  true  art  is  never  fixed,  but  always  flowing. 
The  sweetest  music  is  not  in  the  oratorio,  but  in 
the  human  voice  when  it  speaks  from  its  instant 
life  tones  of  tenderness,  truth,  or  courage.  The 
oratorio  has  already  lost  its  relation  to  the  morn 
ing,  to  the  sun,  and  the  earth,  but  that  persuading 
voice  is  in  tune  with  these.  All  works  of  art  should 
not  be  detached,  but  extempore  performances.  A 
great  man  is  a  new  statue  in  every  attitude  and  ac 
tion.  A  beautiful  woman  is  a  picture  which  drives 
all  beholders  nobly  mad.  Life  may  be  lyric  or 
epic,  as  well  as  a  poem  or  a  romance. 

A  true  announcement  of  the  law  of  creation,  if  a 
man  were  found  worthy  to  declare  it,  would  carry 
art  up  into  the  kingdom  of  nature,  and  destroy  its 
separate  and  contrasted  existence.  The  fountains 
of  invention  and  beauty  in  modern  society  are  all 
but  dried  up.  A  popular  novel,  a  theatre,  or  a 
ball-room  makes  us  feel  that  we  are  all  paupers 
in  the  almshouse  of  this  world,  without  dignity, 
without  skill  or  industry.  Art  is  as  poor  and 
low.  The  old  tragic  Necessity,  which  lowers  on  the 
brows  even  of  the  Venuses  and  the  Cupids  of  the 
antique,  and  furnishes  the  sole  apology  for  the  in 
trusion  of  such  anomalous  figures  into  nature,^ 


ART.  341 

namely  that  they  were  inevitable  ;  that  the  artist 
was  drunk  with  a  passion  for  form  which  he  could 
not  resist,  and  which  vented  itself  in  these  fine  ex 
travagances,  —  no  longer  dignifies  the  chisel  or  the 
pencil.  But  the  artist  and  the  connoisseur  now 
seek  in  art  the  exhibition  of  their  talent,  or  an  asy 
lum  from  the  evils  of  life.  Men  are  not  well 
pleased  with  the  figure  they  make  in  their  own  im 
aginations,  and  they  flee  to  art,  and  convey  their 
better  sense  in  an  oratorio,  a  statue,  or  a  picture. 
Art  makes  the  same  effort  which  a  sensual  prosper 
ity  makes ;  namely  to  detach  the  beautiful  from  the 
useful,  to  do  up  the  work  as  unavoidable,  and,  hat 
ing  it,  pass  on  to  enjoyment.  These  solaces  and 
compensations,  this  division  of  beauty  from  use, 
the  laws  of  nature  do  not  permit.  As  soon  as 
beauty  is  sought,  not  from  religion  and  love  but 
for  pleasure,  it  degrades  the  seeker.  High  beauty 
is  no  longer  attainable  by  him  in  canvas  or  in 
stone,  in  sound,  or  in  lyrical  construction ;  an  ef 
feminate,  prudent,  sickly  beauty,  which  is  not 
beauty,  is  all  that  can  be  formed ;  for  the  hand  can 
never  execute  any  thing  higher  than  the  character 
can  inspire. 

The  art  that  thus  separates  is  itself  first  sepa 
rated.  Art  must  not  be  a  superficial  talent,  but 
must  begin  farther  back  in  man.  Now  men  do  not 
see  nature  to  be  beautiful,  and  they  go  to  make  a 


842  ART. 

statue  which  shall  be.  They  abhor  men  as  taste* 
less,  dull,  and  inconvertible,  and  console  themselves 
with  color-bags  and  blocks  of  marble.  They  reject 
life  as  prosaic,  and  create  a  death  which  they  call 
poetic.  They  despatch  the  day's  weary  chores,  and 
fly  to  voluptuous  reveries.  They  eat  and  drink* 
that  they  may  afterwards  execute  the  ideal.  Thus 
is  art  vilified ;  the  name  conveys  to  the  mind  its 
secondary  and  bad  senses  ;  it  stands  in  the  imagi 
nation  as  somewhat  contrary  to  nature,  and  struck 
with  death  from  the  first.  Would  it  not  be  better 
to  begin  higher  up,  —  to  serve  the  ideal  before  they 
eat  and  drink ;  to  serve  the  ideal  in  eating  and 
drinking,  in  drawing  the  breath,  and  in  the  func 
tions  of  life  ?  Beauty  must  come  back  to  the  use 
ful  arts,  and  the  distinction  between  the  fine  and 
the  useful  arts  be  forgotten.  If  history  were  truly 
told,  if  life  were  nobly  spent,  it  would  be  no 
longer  easy  or  possible  to  distinguish  the  one  from 
the  other.  In  nature,  all  is  useful,  all  is  boautiful. 
It  is  therefore  beautiful  because  it  is  alive,  moving, 
reproductive  ;  it  is  therefore  useful  because  it  is 
symmetrical  and  fair.  Beauty  will  not  come  at  the 
call  of  a  legislature,  nor  will  it  repeat  in  Eng« 
land  or  America  its  history  in  Greece.  It  will 
come,  as  always,  unannounced,  and  spring  up  be 
tween  the  feet  of  brave  and  earnest  men.  It  is  in 
vain  that  we  look  for  genius  to  reiterate  its  mira« 


ART.  343 

ties  in  the  old  arts ;  it  is  its  instinct  to  find  beauty 
and  holiness  in  new  and  necessary  facts,  in  the 
field  and  road-side,  in  the  shop  and  mill.  Pro 
ceeding  from  a  religious  heart  it  will  raise  to  a  di 
vine  use  the  railroad,  the  insurance  office,  the  joint- 
stock  company  ;  our  law,  our  primary  assemblies, 
our  commerce,  the  galvanic  battery,  the  electric  jar, 
the  prism,  and  the  chemist's  retort ;  in  which  we 
seek  now  only  an  economical  use.  Is  not  the  self 
ish  and  even  cruel  aspect  which  belongs  to  our 
great  mechanical  works,  to  mills,  railways,  and 
machinery,  the  effect  of  the  mercenary  impulses 
which  these  works  obey?  When  its  errands  are 
noble  and  adequate,  a  steamboat  bridging  the  At 
lantic  between  Old  and  New  England  and  arriving 
at  its  ports  with  the  punctuality  of  a  planet,  is  a 
step  of  man  into  harmony  with  nature.  The  boat 
at  St.  Petersburg,  which  plies  along  the  Lena  by 
magnetism,  needs  little  to  make  it  sublime.  When 
science  is  learned  in  love,  and  its  powers  are 
wielded  by  love,  they  will  appear  the  supplements 
and  continuations  of  the  material  creation. 


ESSAYS 

SECOND  SERIES 


CONTENTS. 


PAGE 

I.   THE  POET 7 

II.   EXPERIENCE 47 

III.  CHARACTER        .                87 

IV.  MANNERS 115 

V.   GIFTS         .........  151 

VI.   NATURE 161 

VII.   POLITICS 189 

VIII.   NOMINALIST  AND  REALIST 213 

NEW  ENGLAND  REFORMERS.    Lecture  at  Amory  Hall      .  237 


THE  POET. 


A  moody  child  and  wildly  wise 

Pursued  the  game  with  joyful  eyes, 

Which  chose,  like  meteors,  their  way, 

And  rived  the  dark  with  private  ray : 

They  overleapt  the  horizon's  edge, 

Searched  with  Apollo's  privilege  ; 

Through  man,  and  woman,  and  sea,  and  star 

Saw  the  dance  of  nature  forward  far ; 

Through  worlds,  and  races,  and  terms,  and  times 

Saw  musical  order,  and  pairing  rhymes. 


Olympian  bards  who  sung 
Divine  ideas  below, 

Which  always  find  us  young, 
And  always  keep  us  so. 


L 

THE  POET. 


THOSE  who  are  esteemed  umpires  of  taste  are 
often  persons  who  have  acquired  some  knowledge 
of  admired  pictures  or  sculptures,  and  have  an  in 
clination  for  whatever  is  elegant ;  but  if  you  inquire 
whether  they  are  beautiful  souls,  and  whether  their 
own  acts  are  like  fair  pictures,  you  learn  that  they 
are  selfish  and  sensual.  Their  cultivation  is  local, 
as  if  you  should  rub  a  log  of  dry  wood  in  one  spot 
to  produce  fire,  all  the  rest  remaining  cold.  Their 
knowledge  of  the  fine  arts  is  some  study  of  rules 
and  particulars,  or  some  limited  judgment  of  color 
or  form,  which  is  exercised  for  amusement  or  for 
show.  It  is  a  proof  of  the  shallowness  of  the  doc 
trine  of  beauty  as  it  lies  in  the  minds  of  our  ama 
teurs,  that  men  seem  to  have  lost  the  perception  of 
the  instant  dependence  of  form  upon  soul.  There 
is  no  doctrine  of  forms  in  our  philosophy.  We 
were  put  into  our  bodies,  as  fire  is  put  into  a  pan 
to  be  carried  about ;  but  there  is  no  accurate  ad 
justment  between  the  spirit  and  the  organ,  much 


10  THE  POET. 

less  is  the  latter  the  germination  of  the  former.  So 
in  regard  to  other  forms,  the  intellectual  men  do 
not  believe  in  any  essential  dependence  of  the  ma 
terial  world  on  thought  and  volition.  Theologians 
think  it  a  pretty  air-castle  to  talk  of  the  spiritual 
meaning  of  a  ship  or  a  cloud,  of  a  city  or  a  con 
tract,  but  they  prefer  to  come  again  to  the  solid 
ground  of  historical  evidence ;  and  even  the  poets 
are  contented  with  a  civil  and  conformed  manner 
of  living,  and  to  write  poems  from  the  fancy,  at  a 
safe  distance  from  their  own  experience.  But  the 
highest  minds  of  the  world  have  never  ceased  to 
explore  the  double  meaning,  or  shall  I  say  the 
quadruple  or  the  centuple  or  much  more  manifold 
meaning,  of  every  sensuous  fact ;  Orpheus,  Emped- 
ocles,  Heraclitus,  Plato,  Plutarch,  Dante,  Swe- 
denborg,  and  the  masters  of  sculpture,  picture,  and 
poetry.  For  we  are  not  pans  and  barrows,  nor 
even  porters  of  the  fire  and  torch-bearers,  but  chil 
dren  of  the  fire,  made  of  it,  and  only  the  same  di 
vinity  transmuted  and  at  two  or  three  removes, 
when  we  know  least  about  it.  And  this  hidden 
truth,  that  the  fountains  whence  all  this  river  of 
Time  and  its  creatures  floweth  are  intrinsically 
ideal  and  beautiful,  draws  us  to  the  consideration 
of  the  nature  and  functions  of  the  Poet,  or  the 
man  of  Beauty  ;  to  the  means  and  materials  he 
uses,  and  to  the  general  aspect  of  the  art  in  the 
present  time. 


THE  POET.  11 

The  breadth  of  the  problem  is  great,  for  the  poet 
is  representative.  He  stands  among  partial  men 
for  the  complete  man,  and  apprises  us  not  of  his 
wealth,  but  of  the  common  wealth.  The  young 
man  reveres  men  of  genius,  because,  to  speak  truly, 
they  are  more  himself  than  he  is.  They  receive  of 
the  soul  as  he  also  receives,  but  they  more.  Nature 
enhances  her  beauty,  to  the  eye  of  loving  men, 
from  their  belief  that  the  poet  is  beholding  her 
shows  at  the  same  time.  He  is  isolated  among  his 
contemporaries  by  truth  and  by  his  art,  but  with 
this  consolation  in  his  pursuits,  that  they  will  draw 
all  men  sooner  or  later.  For  all  men  live  by  truth 
and  stand  in  need  of  expression.  In  love,  in  art, 
in  avarice,  in  politics,  in  labor,  in  games,  we  study 
to  utter  our  painful  secret.  The  man  is  only  half 
himself,  the  other  half  is  his  expression. 

Notwithstanding  this  necessity  to  be  published, 
adequate  expression  is  rare.  I  know  not  how  it 
is  that  we  need  an  interpreter,  but  the  great  major 
ity  of  men  seem  to  be  minors,  who  have  not  yefc 
come  into  possession  of  their  own,  or  mutes,  who 
cannot  report  the  conversation  they  have  had  with 
nature.  There  is  no  man  who  does  not  anticipate 
a  supersensual  utility  in  the  sun  and  stars,  earth 
and  water.  These  stand  and  wait  to  render  him  a 
peculiar  service.  But  there  is  some  obstruction  or 
some  excess  of  phlegm  in  our  constitution,  which 


12  THE  POET. 

does  not  suffer  them  to  yield  the  due  effect.  Too 
feeble  fall  the  impressions  of  nature  on  us  to  make 
us  artists.  Every  touch  should  thrill.  Every  man 
should  be  so  much  an  artist  that  he  could  report  in 
conversation  what  had  befallen  him.  Yet,  in  our 
experience,  the  rays  or  appulses  have  sufficient 
force  to  arrive  at  the  senses,  but  not  enough  to 
reach  the  quick  and  compel  the  reproduction  of 
themselves  in  speech.  The  poet  is  the  person  in 
whom  these  powers  are  in  balance,  the  man  with 
out  impediment,  who  sees  and  handles  that  which 
others  dream  of,  traverses  the  whole  scale  of  expe 
rience,  and  is  representative  of  man,  in  virtue  of 
being  the  largest  power  to  receive  and  to  im 
part. 

For  the  Universe  has  three  children,  born  at 
one  time,  which  reappear  under  different  names 
in  every  system  of  thought,  whether  they  be  called 
cause,  operation,  and  effect ;  or,  more  poetically, 
Jove,  Pluto,  Neptune  ;  or,  theologically,  the  Father, 
the  Spirit,  and  the  Son ;  but  which  we  will  call 
here  the  Knower,  the  Doer,  and  the  Sayer0  These 
stand  respectively  for  the  love  of  truth,  for  the 
love  of  good,  and  for  the  love  of  beauty.  These 
three  are  equal.  Each  is  that  which  he  is,  essen 
tially,  so  that  he  cannot  be  surmounted  or  ana 
lyzed,  and  each  of  these  three  has  the  power  of  the 
others  latent  in  him,  and  his  own,  patent. 


THE  POET.  13 

The  poet  is  the  sayer,  the  namer,  and  represents 
beauty.  He  is  a  sovereign,  and  stands  on  the  cen 
tre.  For  the  world  is  not  painted  or  adorned,  but 
is  from  the  beginning  beautiful ;  and  God  has  not 
made  some  beautiful  things,  but  Beauty  is  the  cre 
ator  of  the  universe.  Therefore  the  poet  is  not  any- 
permissive  potentate,  but  is  emperor  in  his  own 
right.  Criticism  is  infested  with  a  cant  of  materi 
alism,  which  assumes  that  manual  skill  and  activity 
is  the  first  merit  of  all  men,  and  disparages  such 
as  say  and  do  not,  overlooking  the  fact  that  some 
men,  namely  poets,  are  natural  sayers,  sent  into  the 
world  to  the  end  of  expression,  and  confounds  them 
with  those  whose  province  is  action  but  who  quit  it 
to  imitate  the  sayers.  But  Homer's  words  are  as 
costly  and  admirable  to  Homer  as  Agamemnon's 
victories  are  to  Agamemnon.  The  poet  does  not 
wait  for  the  hero  or  the  sage,  but,  as  they  act  and 
think  primarily,  so  he  writes  primarily  what  will 
and  must  be  spoken,  reckoning  the  others,  though 
primaries  also,  yet,  in  respect  to  him,  secondaries 
and  servants ;  as  sitters  or  models  in  the  studio  of 
a,  painter,  or  as  assistants  who  bring  building-mate 
rials  to  an  architect. 

For  poetry  was  all  written  before  time  was,  and 
whenever  we  are  so  finely  organized  that  we  can 
penetrate  into  that  region  where  the  air  is  music, 
*«  hear  those  primal  warblings  and  attempt  to 


14  THE  POET. 

write  them  down,  but  we  lose  ever  and  anon  a  word 
or  a  verse  and  substitute  something  of  our  own, 
and  thus  miswrite  the  poem.  The  men  of  more 
delicate  ear  write  down  these  cadences  more  faith 
fully,  and  these  transcripts,  though  imperfect,  be 
come  the  songs  of  the  nations.  For  nature  is  as 
truly  beautiful  as  it  is  good,  or  as  it  is  reasonable, 
and  must  as  much  appear  as  it  must  be  done,  or  be 
known.  Words  and  deeds  are  quite  indifferent 
modes  of  the  divine  energy.  Words  are  also  ac 
tions,  and  actions  are  a  kind  of  words. 

The  sign  and  credentials  of  the  poet  are  that  he 
announces  that  which  no  man  foretold.  He  is  the 
true  and  only  doctor  ;  he  knows  and  tells ;  he  is 
the  only  teller  of  news,  for  he  was  present  and  privy 
to  the  appearance  which  he  describes.  He  is  a  be 
holder  of  ideas  and  an  utterer  of  the  necessary  and 
causal.  For  we  do  not  speak  now  of  men  of  poetical 
talents,  or  of  industry  and  skill  in  metre,  but  of  the 
true  poet.  I  took  part  in  a  conversation  the  other 
day  concerning  a  recent  writer  of  lyrics,  a  man  of 
subtle  mind,  whose  head  appeared  to  be  a  music- 
box  of  delicate  tunes  and  rhythms,  and  whose  skill 
and  command  of  language  we  could  not  sufficiently 
praise.  But  when  the  question  arose  whether  he 
was  not  only  a  lyrist  but  a  poet,  we  were  obliged  to 
confess  that  he  is  plainly  a  contemporary,  not  an 
eternal  man.  He  does  not  stand  out  of  our  low 


THE  POET.  15 

{imitations,  like  a  Chimborazo  under  the  line,  run 
ning  up  from  a  torrid  base  through  all  the  climates 
of  the  globe,  with  belts  of  the  herbage  of  every  lat 
itude  on  its  high  and  mottled  sides ;  but  this  gen 
ius  is  the  landscape  -  garden  of  a  modern  house, 
adorned  with  fountains  and  statues,  with  well-bred 
men  and  women  standing  and  sitting  in  the  walks 
and  terraces.  We  hear,  through  all  the  varied 
music,  the  ground-tone  of  conventional  life.  Our 
poets  are  men  of  talents  who  sing,  and  not  the  chil 
dren  of  music.  The  argument  is  secondary,  the 
finish  of  the  verses  is  primary. 

For  it  is  not  metres,  but  a  metre-making  argu 
ment  that  makes  a  poem,  —  a  thought  so  passionate 
and  alive  that  like  the  spirit  of  a  plant  or  an  ani 
mal  it  has  an  architecture  of  its  own,  and  adorns 
nature  with  a  new  thing.  The  thought  and  the 
form  are  equal  in  the  order  of  time,  but  in  the  or 
der  of  genesis  the  thought  is  prior  to  the  form.  The 
poet  has  a  new  thought ;  he  has  a  whole  new  expe 
rience  to  unfold  ;  he  will  tell  us  how  it  was  with 
him,  and  all  men  will  be  the  richer  in  his  fortune. 
For  the  experience  of  each  new  age  requires  a  new 
confession,  and  the  world  seems  always  waiting  for 
its  poet.  I  remember  when  I  was  young  how  much 
I  was  moved  one  morning  by  tidings  that  genius 
had  appeared  in  a  youth  who  sat  near  me  at  table. 
He  had  left  his  work  and  gone  rambling  none  knew 


16  THE  POET. 

whither,  and  had  written  hundreds  of  lines,  but 
could  not  tell  whether  that  which  was  in  him  was 
therein  told  ;  he  could  tell  nothing  but  that  all 
was  changed,  —  man,  beast,  heaven,  earth  and  sea. 
How  gladly  we  listened  !  how  credulous  !  Society 
seemed  to  be  compromised.  We  sat  in  the  aurora 
of  a  sunrise  which  was  to  put  out  all  the  stars» 
Boston  seemed  to  be  at  twice  the  distance  it  had 
the  night  before,  or  was  much  farther  than  that. 
Rome,  —  what  was  Rome  ?  Plutarch  and  Shak- 
speare  were  in  the  yellow  leaf,  and  Homer  no  more 
should  be  heard  of.  It  is  much  to  know  that  po 
etry  has  been  written  this  very  day,  under  this  very 
roof,  by  your  side.  What !  that  wonderful  spirit 
has  not  expired  !  These  stony  moments  are  still 
sparkling  and  animated  !  I  had  fancied  that  the 
oracles  were  all  silent,  and  nature  had  spent  her 
fires ;  and  behold  !  all  night,  from  every  pore,  these 
fine  auroras  have  been  streaming.  Every  one  has 
some  interest  in  the  advent  of  the  poet,  and  no  one 
knows  how  much  it  may  concern  him.  We  know 
that  the  secret  of  the  world  is  profound,  but  who  or 
what  shall  be  our  interpreter,  we  know  not.  A 
mountain  ramble,  a  new  style  of  face,  a  new  person, 
may  put  the  key  into  our  hands.  Of  course  the 
value  of  genius  to  us  is  in  the  veracity  of  its  report. 
Talent  may  frolic  and  juggle ;  genius  realizes  and 
fcdds.  Mankind  in  good  earnest  have  availed  so  fai 


THE  POET.  17 

In  understanding  themselves  and  their  work,  that 
the  foremost  watchman  on  the  peak  announces  his 
news.  It  is  the  truest  word  ever  spoken,  and  the 
phrase  will  be  the  fittest,  most  musical,  and  the  un 
erring  voice  of  the  world  for  that  time. 

All  that  we  call  sacred  history  attests  that  the 
birth  of  a  poet  is  the  principal  event  in  chronology. 
Man,  never  so  often  deceived,  still  watches  for  the 
arrival  of  a  brother  who  can  hold  him  steady  to  a 
truth  until  he  has  made  it  his  own.  With  what 
joy  I  begin  to  read  a  poem  which  I  confide  in  as  an 
inspiration  !  And  now  my  chains  are  to  be  broken ; 
I  shall  mount  above  these  clouds  and  opaque  airs  in 
which  I  live,  —  opaque,  though  they  seem  transpar 
ent,  —  and  from  the  heaven  of  truth  I  shall  see 
and  comprehend  my  relations.  That  will  reconcile 
me  to  life  and  renovate  nature,  to  see  trifles  ani 
mated  by  a  tendency,  and  to  know  what  I  am  doing. 
Life  will  no  more  be  a  noise ;  now  I  shall  see  men 
and  women,  and  know  the  signs  by  which  they  may 
be  discerned  from  fools  and  satans.  This  day  shall 
be  better  than  my  birthday :  then  I  became  an  ani 
mal  ;  now  I  am  invited  into  the  science  of  the  real. 
Such  is  the  hope,  but  the  fruition  is  postponed.  Of- 
tener  it  falls  that  this  winged  man,  who  will  carry 
me  into  the  heaven,  whirls  me  into  mists,  then  leaps 
and  frisks  about  with  me  as  it  were  from  cloud  to 
cloud,  still  affirming  that  he  is  bound  heaven wao-d ; 

VOL.   HI.  2 


18  THE  POET. 

and  I,  being  myself  a  novice,  am  slow  in  perceiving 
that  he  does  not  know  the  way  into  the  heavens,  and 
is  merely  bent  that  I  should  admire  his  skill  to  rise 
like  a  fowl  or  a  flying  fish,  a  little  way  from  the 
ground  or  the  water ;  but  the  all-piercing,  all-feed 
ing,  and  ocular  air  of  heaven  that  man  shall  never 
inhabit.  I  tumble  down  again  soon  into  my  old 
nooks,  and  lead  the  life  of  exaggerations  as  before, 
and  have  lost  my  faith  in  the  possibility  of  any 
guide  who  can  lead  me  thither  where  I  would  be. 

But,  leaving  these  victims  of  vanity,  let  us,  with 
new  hope,  observe  how  nature,  by  worthier  im 
pulses,  has  insured  the  poet's  fidelity  to  his  office 
of  announcement  and  affirming,  namely  by  the 
beauty  of  things,  which  becomes  a  new  and  higher 
beauty  when  expressed.  Nature  offers  all  her  crea 
tures  to  him  as  a  picture-language.  Being  used  as 
a  type,  a  second  wonderful  value  appears  in  the  ob 
ject,  far  better  than  its  old  value  ;  as  the  carpen 
ter's  stretched  cord,  if  you  hold  your  ear  close 
enough,  is  musical  in  the  breeze.  "  Things  more 
excellent  than  every  image,"  says  Jamblichus,  "  are 
expressed  through  images."  Things  admit  of  be 
ing  used  as  symbols  because  nature  is  a  symbol,  in 
the  whole,  and  in  every  part.  Every  line  we  can 
draw  in  the  sand  has  expression;  and  there  is  no 
body  without  its  spirit  or  genius.  All  form  is  an 
effect  of  character  ;  all  condition,  of  the  quality  of 


THE  POET.  19 

the  life ;  all  harmony,  of  health  -,  and  for  this  rea 
son  a  perception  of  beauty  should  be  sympathetic, 
or  proper  only  to  the  good.  The  beautiful  rests  on 
the  foundations  of  the  necessary.  The  soul  makes 
the  body,  as  the  wise  Spenser  teaches  :  — 

"  So  every  spirit,  as  it  is  more  pure, 
And  hath  in  it  the  more  of  heavenly  light, 
So  it  the  fairer  body  doth  procure 
To  habit  in,  and  it  more  fairly  dight, 
With  cheerful  grace  and  amiable  sight. 
For,  of  the  soul,  the  body  form  doth  take, 
For  soul  is  form,  and  doth  the  body  make." 

Here  we  find  ourselves  suddenly  not  in  a  critical 
speculation  but  in  a  holy  place,  and  should  go  very 
warily  and  reverently.  We  stand  before  the  secret 
of  the  world,  there  where  Being  passes  into  Appear 
ance  and  Unity  into  Variety. 

The  Universe  is  the  externization  of  the  souL 
Wherever  the  life  is,  that  bursts  into  appearance 
around  it.  Our  science  is  sensual,  and  therefore 
superficial.  The  earth  and  the  heavenly  bodies, 
physics,  and  chemistry,  we  sensually  treat,  as  if 
they  were  self-existent ;  but  these  are  the  retinue  of 
that  Being  we  have.  "  The  mighty  heaven,"  said 
Proclus,  "  exhibits,  in  its  transfigurations,  clear 
images  of  the  splendor  of  intellectual  perceptions ; 
being  moved  in  conjunction  with  the  unapparent 
periods  of  intellectual  natures*"  Therefore  science 


20  THE  POET. 

always  goes  abreast  with  the  just  elevation  of  tho 
man,  keeping  step  with  religion  and  metaphysics ; 
or  the  state  of  science  is  an  index  of  our  self-knowl 
edge.  Since  every  thing  in  nature  answers  ,to  a 
moral  power,  if  any  phenomenon  remains  brute  and 
dark  it  is  because  the  corresponding  faculty  in  the 
observer  is  not  yet  active. 

No  wonder  then,  if  these  waters  be  so  deep,  that 
we  hover  over  them  with  a  religious  regard.  The 
beauty  of  the  fable  proves  the  importance  of  the 
sense ;  to  the  poet,  and  to  all  others ;  or,  if  you 
please,  every  man  is  so  far  a  poet  as  to  be  suscep 
tible  of  these  enchantments  of  nature ;  for  all  men 
have  the  thoughts  whereof  the  universe  is  the  cele 
bration.  I  find  that  the  fascination  resides  in  the 
symbol.  Who  loves  nature?  Who  does  not?  Is 
it  only  poets,  and  men  of  leisure  and  cultivation, 
who  live  with  her  ?  No ;  but  also  hunters,  farmers, 
grooms,  and  butchers,  though  they  express  their  af 
fection  in  their  choice  of  life  and  not  in  their  choice 
of  words.  The  writer  wonders  what  the  coachman 
or  the  hunter  values  in  riding,  in  horses  and  dogs. 
It  is  not  superficial  qualities.  When  you  talk  with 
him  he  holds  these  at  as  slight  a  rate  as  you.  His 
worship  is  sympathetic ;  he  has  no  definitions,  but 
he  is  commanded  in  nature  by  the  living  power 
which  he  feels  to  be  there  present.  No  imitation  or 
playing  of  these  things  would  content  him ;  he  lovea 


THE  POET.  21 

the  earnest  of  the  north  wind,  of  rain,  of  stone,  and 
wood,  and  iron.  A  beauty  not  explicable  is  dearer 
than  a  beauty  which  we  can  see  to  the  end  of.  It 
is  nature  the  symbol,  nature  certifying  the  super 
natural,  body  overflowed  by  life  which  he  worships 
with  coarse  but  sincere  rites. 

The  inwardness  and  mystery  of  this  attachment 
drive  men  of  every  class  to  the  use  of  emblems. 
The  schools  of  poets  and  philosophers  are  not  more 
intoxicated  with  their  symbols  than  the  populace 
with  theirs.  In  our  political  parties,  compute  the 
power  of  badges  and  emblems.  See  the  great  ball 
which  they  roll  from  Baltimore  to  Bunker  Hill! 
In  the  political  processions,  Lowell  goes  in  a  loom, 
and  Lynn  in  a  shoe,  and  Salem  in  a  ship.  Witness 
the  cider-barrel,  the  log-cabin,  the  hickory- stick,  the 
palmetto,  and  all  the  cognizances  of  party.  See  the 
power  of  national  emblems.  Some  stars,  lilies, 
leopards,  a  crescent,  a  lion,  an  eagle,  or  other  figure 
which  came  into  credit  God  knows  how,  on  an  old 
rag  of  bunting,  blowing  in  the  wind  on  a  fort  at 
the  ends  of  the  earth,  shall  make  the  blood  tingle 
under  the  rudest  or  the  most  conventional  exterior. 
The  people  fancy  they  hate  poetry,  and  they  are  all 
poets  and  mystics ! 

Beyond  this  universality  of  tli'3  symbolic  language, 
we  are  apprised  of  the  divineness  of  this  superior 
use  of  things,  whereby  the  world  is  a  temple  whose 


22  THE  POET. 

walls  are  covered  with  emblems,  pictures,  and  com- 
mandments  of  the  Deity,  —  in  this,  that  there  is  no 
fact  in  nature  which  does  not  carry  the  whole  sense 
of  nature ;  and  the  distinctions  which  we  make  in 
events  and  in  affairs,  of  low  and  high,  honest  and 
base,  disappear  when  nature  is  used  as  a  symbol. 
Thought  makes  everything  fit  for  use.  The  vocab 
ulary  of  an  omniscient  man  would  embrace  words 
and  images  excluded  from  polite  conversation. 
What  would  be  base,  or  even  obscene,  to  the  ob 
scene,  becomes  illustrious,  spoken  in  a  new  connec 
tion  of  thought.  The  piety  of  the  Hebrew  prophets 
purges  their  grossness.  The  circumcision  is  an  ex 
ample  of  the  power  of  poetry  to  raise  the  low  and 
offensive.  Small  and  mean  things  serve  as  well  as 
great  symbols.  The  meaner  the  type  by  which  a 
law  is  expressed,  the  more  pungent  it  is,  and  the 
more  lasting  in  the  memories  of  men  ;  just  as  we 
choose  the  smallest  box  or  case  in  which  any  need- 
fid  utensil  can  be  carried.  Bare  lists  of  words 
are  found  suggestive  to  an  imaginative  and  excited 
mind ;  as  it  is  related  of  Lord  Chatham  that  he  was 
accustomed  to  read  in  Bailey's  Dictionary  when  he 
was  preparing  to  speak  in  Parliament.  The  poor 
est  experience  is  rich  enough  for  all  the  purposes  of 
expressing  thought.  Why  covet  a  knowledge  of 
new  facts?  Day  and  night,  house  and  garden,  a 
few  books,  a  few  actions,  serve  us  as  well  as  would 


THE  POET.  23 

all  trades  and  all  spectacles.  We  are  far  from 
having  exhausted  the  significance  of  the  few  sym 
bols  we  use.  We  can  come  to  use  them  yet  with  a 
terrible  simplicity.  It  does  not  need  that  a  poem, 
should  be  long.  Every  word  was  once  a  poein. 
Every  new  relation  is  a  new  word.  Also  we  use 
defects  and  deformities  to  a  sacred  purpose,  so  ex 
pressing  our  sense  that  the  evils  of  the  world  are 
such  only  to  the  evil  eye.  In  the  old  mythology, 
mythologists  observe,  defects  are  ascribed  to  divine 
natures,  as  lameness  to  Vulcan,  blindness  to  Cupid, 
and  the  like,  —  to  signify  exuberances. 

For  as  it  is  dislocation  and  detachment  from  the 
life  of  God  that  makes  things  ugly,  the  poet,  who 
re-attaches  things  to  nature  and  the  Whole,  —  re- 
attaching  even  artificial  things  and  violations  of 
nature,  to  nature,  by  a  deeper  insight,  —  disposes 
very  easily  of  the  most  disagreeable  facts.  Read 
ers  of  poetry  see  the  factory- village  and  the  rail 
way,  and  fancy  that  the  poetry  of  the  landscape  is 
broken  up  by  these ;  for  these  works  of  art  are  not 
yet  consecrated  in  their  reading ;  but  the  poet  sees 
them  fall  within  the  great  Order  not  less  than  the 
beehive  or  the  spider's  geometrical  web.  Nature 
adopts  them  very  fast  into  her  vital  circles,  and  the 
gliding  train  of  cars  she  loves  like  her  own.  Be 
sides,  in  a  centred  mind,  it  signifies  nothing  how 

O  O 

(nany  mechanical  inventions  you  exhibit.     Though 


24  THE  POET. 

you  add  millions,  and  never  so  surprising,  the  fact 
of  mechanics  has  not  gained  a  grain's  weight.  The 
spiritual  fact  remains  unalterable,  by  many  or  by 
few  particulars ;  as  no  mountain  is  of  any  appreci 
able  height  to  break  the  curve  of  the  sphere.  A 
shrewd  country-boy  goes  to  the  city  for  the  first 
time,  and  the  complacent  citizen  is  not  satisfied 
with  his  little  wonder.  It  is  not  that  he  does  not 
see  all  the  fine  houses  and  know  that  he  never  saw 
such  before,  but  he  disposes  of  them  as  easily  as 
the  poet  finds  place  for  the  railway.  The  chief 
value  of  the  new  fact  is  to  enhance  the  great  and 
constant  fact  of  Life,  which  can  dwarf  any  and 
every  circumstance,  and  to  which  the  belt  of  wam 
pum  and  the  commerce  of  America  are  alike. 

The  world  being  thus  put  under  the  mind  for 
verb  and  noun,  the  poet  is  he  who  can  articulate  it. 
For  though  life  is  great,  and  fascinates  and  absorbs ; 
and  though  all  men  are  intelligent  of  the  symbols 
through  which  it  is  named ;  yet  they  cannot  origi 
nally  use  them.  We  are  symbols  and  inhabit  sym 
bols  ;  workmen,  work,  and  tools,  words  and  things, 
birth  and  death,  all  are  emblems  ;  but  we  sympa 
thize  with  the  symbols,  and  being  infatuated  with 
the  economical  uses  of  things,  we  do  not  know  that 
they  are  thoughts.  The  poet,  by  an  ulterior  intel 
lectual  perception,  gives  them  a  power  which  makes 
their  old  use  forgotten,  and  puts  eyes  and  a  tongue 


THE  POET.  25 

into  every  dumb  and  inanimate  object.  He  per 
ceives  the  independence  of  the  thought  on  the  sym 
bol,  the  stability  of  the  thought,  the  accidency  and 
fugacity  of  the  symbol.  As  the  eyes  of  Lyncaeus 
were  said  to  see  through  the  earth,  so  the  poet  turns 
the  world  to  glass,  and  shows  us  all  things  in  their 
right  series  and  procession.  For  through  that  bet 
ter  perception  he  stands  one  step  nearer  to  things, 
and  sees  the  flowing  or  metamorphosis  ;  perceives 
that  thought  is  multiform  ;  that  within  the  form  of 
every  creature  is  a  force  impelling  it  to  ascend  into 
a  higher  form  ;  and  following  with  his  eyes  the  life, 
uses  the  forms  which  express  that  life,  and  so  his 
speech  flows  with  the  flowing  of  nature.  All  the 
facts  of  the  animal  economy,  sex,  nutriment,  ges 
tation,  birth,  growth,  are  symbols  of  the  passage  of 
the  world  into  the  soul  of  man,  to  suffer  there  a 
change  and  reappear  a  new  and  higher  fact.  He 
uses  forms  according  to  the  life,  and  not  according 
to  the  form.  This  is  true  science.  The  poet  alone 
knows  astronomy,  chemistry,  vegetation  and  anima 
tion,  for  he  does  not  stop  at  these  facts,  but  employs 
them  as  signs.  He  knows  why  the  plain  or  meadow 
of  space  was  strown  with  these  flowers  we  call  suns 
and  moons  and  stars ;  why  the  great  deep  is  adorned 
with  animals,  with  men,  and  gods  ;  for  in  every 
word  he  speaks  he  rides  on  them  as  the  horses  of 
thought. 


26  THE  POET 

By  virtue  of  this  science  the  poet  is  the  Namei 
or  Language-maker,  naming  tilings  sometimes  after 
their  appearance,  sometimes  after  their  essence,  and 
giving  to  every  one  its  own  name  and  not  another's, 
thereby  rejoicing  the  intellect,  which  delights  in 
detachment  or  boundary.  The  poets  made  all  the 
words,  and  therefore  language  is  the  archives  of 
history,  and,  if  we  must  say  it,  a  sort  of  tomb  of 
the  muses.  For  though  the  origin  of  most  of  our 
words  is  forgotten,  each  word  was  at  first  a  stroke 
of  genius,  and  obtained  currency  because  for  the 
moment  it  symbolized  the  world  to  the  first  speaker 
and  to  the  hearer.  The  etymologist  finds  the  dead 
est  word  to  have  been  once  a  brilliant  picture. 
Language  is  fossil  poetry.  As  the  limestone  of  the 
continent  consists  of  infinite  masses  of  the  shells  of 
animalcules,  so  language  is  made  up  of  images  or 
tropes,  which  now,  in  their  secondary  use,  have  long 
ceased  to  remind  us  of  their  poetic  origin.  But  the 
poet  names  the  thing  because  he  sees  it,  or  comes 
one  step  nearer  to  it  than  any  other.  This  expres 
sion  or  naming  is  not  art,  but  a  second  nature, 
grown  out  of  the  first,  as  a  leaf  out  of  a  tree.  What 
we  call  nature  is  a  certain  self-regulated  motion  or 
change ;  and  nature  does  all  things  by  her  own 
hands,  and  does  not  leave  another  to  baptize  her 
but  baptizes  herself ;  and  this  through  the  meta 
morphosis  again.  I  remember  that  a  certain  poet 
described  it  to  me  thus  :  — 


THE  POET.  21 

Genius  is  the  activity  which  repairs  the  decays 
D£  things,  whether  wholly  or  partly  of  a  material 
and  finite  kind.  Nature,  through  all  her  king 
doms,  insures  herself.  Nobody  cares  for  planting 
the  poor  fungus ;  so  she  shakes  down  from  the  gills 
of  one  agaric  countless  spores,  any  one  of  which, 
being  preserved,  transmits  new  billions  of  spores 
to-morrow  or  next  day.  The  new  agaric  of  this 
hour  has  a  chance  which  the  old  one  had  not. 
This  atom  of  seed  is  thrown  into  a  new  place,  not 
subject  to  the  accidents  which  destroyed  its  parent 
two  rods  off.  She  makes  a  man  ;  and  having 
brought  him  to  ripe  age,  she  will  no  longer  run  the 
risk  of  losing  this  wonder  at  a  blow,  but  she  de 
taches  from  him  a  new  self,  that  the  kind  may  be 
safe  from  accidents  to  which  the  individual  is  ex 
posed.  So  when  the  soul  of  the  poet  has  come  to 
ripeness  of  thought,  she  detaches  and  sends  away 
from  it  its  poems  or  songs,  —  a  fearless,  sleepless, 
deathless  progeny,  which  is  not  exposed  to  the  acci 
dents  of  the  weary  kingdom  of  time  ;  a  fearless, 
vivacious  offspring,  clad  with  wings  (such  was  the 
virtue  of  the  soul  out  of  which  they  came)  which 
carry  them  fast  and  far,  and  infix  them  irrecovera 
bly  into  the  hearts  of  men.  These  wings  are  the 
beauty  of  the  poet's  soul.  The  songs,  thus  flying 
immortal  from  their  mortal  parent,  are  pursued  by 
clamorous  flights  of  censures,  which  swarm  in  far 


28  THE  POET. 

greater  numbers  and  threaten  to  devour  them  ;  but 
these  last  are  not  winged.  At  the  end  of  a  very 
short  leap  they  fall  plump  down  and  rot,  having  re 
ceived  from  the  souls  out  of  which  they  came  no 
beautiful  wings.  But  the  melodies  of  the  poet  as 
cend  and  leap  and  pierce  into  the  deeps  of  infinite 
time. 

So  far  the  bard  taught  me,  using  his  freei 
speech.  But  nature  has  a  higher  end,  in  the  pro 
duction  of  new  individuals,  than  security,  namely 
ascension,  or  the  passage  of  the  soul  into  higher 
forms.  I  knew  in  my  younger  days  the  sculptor 
who  made  the  statue  of  the  youth  which  stands  in 
the  public  garden.  He  was,  as  I  remember,  unable 
to  tell  directly  what  made  him  happy  or  unhappy, 
but  by  wonderful  indirections  he  could  tell.  He 
rose  one  day,  according  to  his  habit,  before  the 
dawn,  and  saw  the  morning  break,  grand  as  the 
eternity  out  of  which  it  came,  and  for  many  days 
after,  he  strove  to  express  this  tranquillity,  and  lo ! 
his  chisel  had  fashioned  out  of  marble  the  form  of 
a  beautiful  youth,  Phosphorus,  whose  aspect  is  such 
that  it  is  said  all  persons  who  look  on  it  become 
silent.  The  poet  also  resigns  himself  to  his  mood, 
and  that  thought  which  agitated  him  is  expressed, 
but  alter  idem,  in  a  manner  totally  new.  The  ex. 
pression  is  organic,  or  the  new  type  which  things 


YHE  POET,  29 

themselves  take  when  liberated.  As.  in  the  sun,  ob 
jects  paint  their  images  on  the  retina  of  the  eye,  so 
they,  sharing  the  aspiration  of  the  whole  universe, 
tend  to  paint  a  far  more  delicate  copy  of  their  es 
sence  in  his  mind.  Like  the  metamorphosis  of 
things  into  higher  organic  forms  is  their  change 
into  melodies.  Over  everything  stands  its  daemon 
or  soul,  and,  as  the  form  of  the  thing  is  reflected 
by  the  eye,  so  the  soul  of  the  thing  is  reflected  by  a 
melody.  The  sea,  the  mountain-ridge,  Niagara,  and 
every  flower-bed,  pre-exist,  or  super-exist,  in  pre-can- 
tations,  which  sail  like  odors  in  the  air,  and  when 
any  man  goes  by  with  an  ear  sufficiently  fine,  he 
overhears  them  and  endeavors  to  write  down  the 
notes  without  diluting  or  depraving  them.  And 
herein  is  the  legitimation  of  criticism,  in  the  mind's 
faith  that  the  poems  are  a  corrupt  version  of  some 
text  in  nature  with  which  they  ought  to  be  made  to 
tally.  A  rhyme  in  one  of  our  sonnets  should  not 
be  less  pleasing  than  the  iterated  nodes  of  a  sea- 
shell,  or  the  resembling  difference  of  a  group  of 
flowers.  The  pairing  of  the  birds  is  an  idyl,  not 
tedious  as  our  idyls  are  ;  a  tempest  is  a  rough  ode, 
without  falsehood  or  rant  ;  a  summer,  with  its 
harvest  sown,  reaped,  and  stored,  is  an  epic  song, 
subordinating  how  many  admirably  executed  parts. 
Why  should  not  the  symmetry  and  truth  that  mod 
ulate  these,  glide  into  our  spirits,  and  we  partici 
pate  the  invention  of  nature  ? 


80  THE  POET. 

This  insight,  which  expresses  itself  by  what  is 
called  Imagination,  is  a  very  high  sort  of  seeing, 
which  does  not  come  by  study,  but  by  the  intellect 
being  where  and  what  it  sees  ;  by  sharing  the  path 
or  circuit  of  things  through  forms,  and  so  making 
them  translucid  to  others.  The  path  of  things  is 
silent.  Will  they  suffer  a  speaker  to  go  with  them  ? 
A  spy  they  will  not  suffer  ;  a  lover,  a  poet,  is  the 
transcendency  of  their  own  nature,  —  him  they  will 
suffer.  The  condition  of  true  naming,  on  the  poet's 
part,  is  his  resigning  himself  to  the  divine  aura 
which  breathes  through  forms,  and  accompanying 
that. 

It  is  a  secret  which  every  intellectual  man 
quickly  learns,  that  beyond  the  energy  of  his  pos 
sessed  and  conscious  intellect  he  is  capable  of  a  new 
energy  (as  of  an  intellect  doubled  on  itself),  by 
abandonment  to  the  nature  of  things ;  that  beside 
his  privacy  of  power  as  an  individual  man,  there  is 
a  great  public  power  on  which  he  can  draw,  by  un 
locking,  at  all  risks,  his  human  doors,  and  suffering 
the  ethereal  tides  to  roll  and  circulate  through  him  ; 
then  he  is  caught  up  into  the  life  of  the  Universe, 
his  speech  is  thunder,  his  thought  is  law,  and  his 
words  are  universally  intelligible  as  the  plants  and 
animals.  The  poet  knows  that  he  speaks  ade 
quately  then  only  when  he  speaks  somewhat  wildly, 
or  **  with  the  flower  of  the  mind ;  "  not  with  the  in* 


THE  POET.  31 

tellect  used  as  an  organ,  but  with  the  intellect  re 
leased  from  all  service  and  suffered  to  take  its  di 
rection  from  its  celestial  life;  or  as  the  ancients 
were  wont  to  express  themselves,  not  with  intellect 
alone  but  with  the  intellect  inebriated  by  nectar. 
As  the  traveller  who  has  lost  his  way  throws  his 
reins  on  his  horse's  neck  and  trusts  to  the  instinct 
of  the  animal  to  find  his  road,  so  must  we  do  with 
the  divine  animal  who  carries  us  through  this  world. 
For  if  in  any  manner  we  can  stimulate  this  instinct, 
new  passages  are  opened  for  us  into  nature ;  the 
mind  flows  into  and  through  things  hardest  and 
highest,  and  the  metamorphosis  is  possible. 

This  is  the  reason  why  bards  love  wine,  mead, 
narcotics,  coffee,  tea,  opium,  the  fumes  of  sandal- 
wood  and  tobacco,  or  whatever  other  procurers  of 
animal  exhilaration.  All  men  avail  themselves  of 
such  means  as  they  can,  to  add  this  extraordinary 
power  to  their  normal  powers  ;  and  to  this  end  they 
prize  conversation,  music,  pictures,  sculpture,  danc 
ing,  theatres,  travelling,  war,  mobs,  fires,  gaming, 
politics,  or  love,  or  science,  or  animal  intoxication, 
—  which  are  several  coarser  or  finer  ^wasi-mechan- 
ical  substitutes  for  the  true  nectar,  which  is  the  rav 
ishment  of  the  intellect  by  coming  nearer  to  the 
fact.  These  are  auxiliaries  to  the  centrifugal  ten 
dency  of  a  man,  to  his  passage  out  into  free  space, 
they  help  him  to  escape  the  custody  of  that  body 


82  THE  POET. 

in  which  he  is  pent  up,  and  of  that  jail-yard  of  in 
dividual  relations  in  which  he  is  enclosed.  Hence 
a  great  number  of  such  as  were  professionally  ex- 
pressers  of  Beauty,  as  painters,  poets,  musicians, 
and  actors,  have  been  more  than  others  wont  to  lead 
a  life  of  pleasure  and  indulgence  ;  all  but  the  few 
who  received  the  true  nectar ;  and,  as  it  was  a  spu 
rious  mode  of  attaining  freedom,  as  it  was  an  eman 
cipation  not  into  the  heavens  but  into  the  freedom 
of  baser  places,  they  were  punished  for  that  advan 
tage  they  won,  by  a  dissipation  and  deterioration. 
But  never  can  any  advantage  be  taken  of  nature  by 
a  trick.  The  spirit  of  the  world,  the  great  calm 
presence  of  the  Creator,  comes  not  forth  to  the  sor 
ceries  of  opium  or  of  wine.  The  sublime  vision 
comes  to  the  pure  and  simple  soul  in  a  clean  and 
chaste  body.  That  is  not  an  inspiration,  which  we 
owe  to  narcotics,  but  some  counterfeit  excitement 
and  fury.  Milton  says  that  the  lyric  poet  may 
drink  wine  and  live  generously,  but  the  epic  poet, 
he  who  shall  sing  of  the  gods  and  their  descent 
unto  men,  must  drink  water  out  of  a  wooden  bowl. 
For  poetry  is  not  '  Devil's  wine,'  but  God's  wine. 
It  is  with  this  as  it  is  with  toys.  We  fill  the  hands 
and  nurseries  of  our  children  with  all  manner  of 
dolls,  drums,  and  horses ;  withdrawing  their  eyes 
from  the  plain  face  and  sufficing  objects  of  nature, 
the  sun,  and  moon,  the  animals,  the  water,  and 


THE  POET.  33 

Btones,  which  should  be  their  toys.  So  the  poet's 
habit  of  living  should  be  set  on  a  key  so  low  that 
the  common  influences  should  delight  him.  His 
cheerfulness  should  be  the  gift  of  the  sunlight ;  the 
air  should  suffice  for  his  inspiration,  and  he  should 
be  tipsy  with  water.  That  spirit  which  suffices 
quiet  hearts,  which  seems  to  come  forth  to  such 
from  every  dry  knoll  of  sere  grass,  from  every  pine- 
stump  and  half-imbedded  stone  on  which  the  dull 
March  sun  shines,  comes  forth  to  the  poor  and  hun 
gry,  and  such  as  are  of  simple  taste.  If  thou  fill 
thy  brain  with  Boston  and  New  York,  with  fash 
ion  and  covetousness,  and  wilt  stimulate  thy  jaded 
senses  with  wine  and  French  coffee,  thou  shalt  find 
no  radiance  of  wisdom  in  the  lonely  waste  of  the 
pinewoods. 

If  the  imagination  intoxicates  the  poet,  it  is  not 
inactive  in  other  men.  The  metamorphosis  excites 
in  the  beholder  an  emotion  of  joy.  The  use  of 
symbols  has  a  certain  power  of  emancipation  and 
exhilaration  for  all  men.  We  seem  to  be  touched 
by  a  wand  which  makes  us  dance  and  run  about 
happily,  like  children.  We  are  like  persons  who 
come  out  of  a  cave  or  cellar  into  the  open  air. 
This  is  the  effect  on  us  of  tropes,  fables,  oracles, 
and  all  poetic  forms.  Poets  are  thus  liberating 
gods.  Men  have  really  got  a  new  sense,  and  found 
within  their  world  another  world,  or  nest  of  worlds ; 

VOL.   III.  3 


34  THE  POET. 

for,  the  metamorphosis  once  seen,  we  divine  that  it 
does  not  stop.  I  will  not  now  consider  how  much 
this  makes  the  charm  of  algebra  and  the  mathemat 
ics,  which  also  have  their  tropes,  but  it  is  felt  in 
every  definition;  as  when  Aristotle  defines  space 
to  be  an  immovable  vessel  in  which  things  are  con 
tained  ;  —  or  when  Plato  defines  a  line  to  be  a  flow 
ing  point ;  or  figure  to  be  a  bound  of  solid  ;  and 
many  the  like.  What  a  joyful  sense  of  freedom 
we  have  when  Vitruvius  announces  the  old  opinion 
of  artists  that  no  architect  can  build  any  house 
well  who  does  not  know  something  of  anatomy. 
When  Socrates,  in  Charmides,  tells  us  that  the 
soul  is  cured  of  its  maladies  by  certain  incantations, 
and  that  these  incantations  are  beautiful  reasons, 
from  which  temperance  is  generated  in  souls ;  when 
Plato  calls  the  world  an  animal,  and  Tima3us  af 
firms  that  the  plants  also  are  animals  ;  or  affirms 
a  man  to  be  a  heavenly  tree,  growing  with  his  root, 
which  is  his  head,  upward ;  and,  as  George  Chap 
man,  following  him,  writes,  — 

"  So  in  our  tree  of  man,  whose  nervie  root 
Springs  in  his  top ;  "  — 

when  Orpheus  speaks  of  hoariness  as  "that  white 
flower  which  marks  extreme  old  age  ; "  when  Pro- 
clus  calls  the  universe  the  statue  of  the  intellect  •, 
when  Chaucer,  in  his  praise  of  c  Gentilesse/  com- 


THE  POET.  35 

pares  good  blood  in  mean  condition  to  fire,  which, 
though  carried  to  the  darkest  house  betwixt  this 
and  the  mount  of  Caucasus,  will  yet  hold  its  natu 
ral  office  and  burn  as  bright  as  if  twenty  thousand 
men  did  it  behold  ;  when  John  saw,  in  the  Apoca 
lypse,  the  ruin  of  the  world  through  evil,  and  the 
stars  fall  from  heaven  as  the  figtree  casteth  her 
untimely  fruit ;  when  ^Esop  reports  the  whole  cat 
alogue  of  common  daily  relations  through  the  mas 
querade  of  birds  and  beasts  ;  —  we  take  the  cheer 
ful  hint  of  the  immortality  of  our  essence  and  its 
versatile  habit  and  escapes,  as  when  the  gypsies  say 
of  themselves  "it  is  in  vain  to  hang  them,  they 
cannot  die." 

The  poets  are  thus  liberating  gods.  The  ancient 
British  bards  had  for  the  title  of  their  order, 
tfc  Those  who  are  free  throughout  the  world."  They 
are  free,  and  they  make  free.  An  imaginative 
book  renders  us  much  more  service  at  first,  by  stim 
ulating  us  through  its  tropes,  than  afterward  when 
we  arrive  at  the  precise  sense  of  the  author.  I 
think  nothing  is  of  any  value  in  books  excepting 
the  transcendental  and  extraordinary.  If  a  man  is 
inflamed  and  carried  away  by  his  thought,  to  that 
degree  that  he  forgets  the  authors  and  the  public 
and  heeds  only  this  one  dream  which  holds  him 
like  an  insanity,  let  me  read  his  paper,  and  you 
may  have  all  the  arguments  and  histories  and  criti- 


36  THE  POET. 

cism.  All  the  value  which  attaches  to  Pythagoras, 
Paracelsus,  Cornelius  Agrippa,  Cardan,  Kepler, 
Swedenborg,  Schelling,  Oken,  or  any  other  who  in 
troduces  questionable  facts  into  his  cosmogony,  as 
angels,  devils,  magic,  astrology,  palmistry,  mesmer 
ism,  and  so  on,  is  the  certificate  we  have  of  depar 
ture  from  routine,  and  that  here  is  a  new  witness. 
That  also  is  the  best  success  in  conversation,  the 
magic  of  liberty,  which  puts  the  world  like  a  ball 
in  our  hands.  How  cheap  even  the  liberty  then 
seems ;  how  mean  to  study,  when  an  emotion  com 
municates  to  the  intellect  the  power  to  sap  and  up 
heave  nature  ;  how  great  the  perspective  !  nations, 
times,  systems,  enter  and  disappear  like  threads  in 
tapestry  of  large  figure  and  many  colors ;  dream 
delivers  us  to  dream,  and  while  the  drunkenness 
lasts  we  will  sell  our  bed,  our  philosophy,  our  re 
ligion,  in  our  opulence. 

There  is  good  reason  why  we  should  prize  this 
liberation.  The  fate  of  the  poor  shepherd,  who, 
blinded  and  lost  in  the  snow-storm,  perishes  in  a 
drift  within  a  few  feet  of  his  cottage  door,  is  an 
emblem  of  the  state  of  man.  On  the  brink  of  the 
waters  of  life  and  truth,  we  are  miserably  dying. 
The  inaccessibleness  of  every  thought  but  that  we 
are  in,  is  wonderful.  What  if  you  come  near  to  it ; 
you  are  as  remote  when  you  are  nearest  as  when 
you  are  farthest.  Every  thought  is  also  a  prison  ; 


THE  POET.  37 

every  heaven  is  also  a  prison.  Therefore  we  love 
the  poet,  the  inventor,  who  in  any  form,  whether  in 
an  ode  or  in  an  action  or  in  looks  and  behavior 
has  yielded  us  a  new  thought.  He  unlocks  our 
chains  and  admits  us  to  a  new  scene. 

This  emancipation  Is  dear  to  all  men,  and  the 
power  to  impart  it,  as  it  must  come  from  greater 
depth  and  scope  of  thought,  is  a  measure  of  intel 
lect.  Therefore  all  books  of  the  imagination  en 
dure,  all  which  ascend  to  that  truth  that  the  writer 
sees  nature  beneath  him,  and  uses  it  as  his  expo 
nent.  Every  verse  or  sentence  possessing  this  vir 
tue  will  take  care  of  its  own  immortality.  The  re 
ligions  of  the  world  are  the  ejaculations  of  a  few 
imaginative  men. 

But  the  quality  of  the  imagination  is  to  flow,  and 
not  to  freeze.  The  poet  did  not  stop  at  the  color 
or  the  form,  but  read  their  meaning ;  neither  may 
he  rest  in  this  meaning,  but  he  makes  the  same  ob 
jects  exponents  of  his  new  thought.  Here  is  the 
difference  betwixt  the  poet  and  the  mystic,  that  the 
last  nails  a  symbol  to  one  sense,  which  was  a  true 
sense  for  a  moment,  but  soon  becomes  old  and 
false.  For  all  symbols  are  fluxional ;  all  language 
is  vehicular  and  transitive,  and  is  good,  as  ferries 
and  horses  are,  for  conveyance,  not  as  farms  and 
houses  are,  for  homestead.  Mysticism  consists  in 
the  mistake  of  an  accidental  and  individual  symbol 


38  THE  POET. 

for  an  universal  one.  The  morning-redness  hap 
pens  to  be  the  favorite  meteor  to  the  eyes  of  Jacob 
Behmen,  and  comes  to  stand  to  him  for  truth  and 
faith ;  and,  he  believes,  should  stand  for  the  same 
realities  to  every  reader.  But  the  first  reader  pre 
fers  as  naturally  the  symbol  of  a  mother  and  child, 
or  a  gardener  and  his  bulb,  or  a  jeweller  polishing 
a  gem.  Either  of  these,  or  of  a  myriad  more,  are 
equally  good  to  the  person  to  whom  they  are  sig 
nificant.  Only  they  must  be  held  lightly,  and  be 
very  willingly  translated  into  the  equivalent  terms 
which  others  use.  And  the  mystic  must  be  steadily 
told,  —  All  that  you  say  is  just  as-  true  without  the 
tedious  use  of  that  symbol  as  with  it.  Let  us  have 
a  little  algebra,  instead  of  this  trite  rhetoric,— 
universal  signs,  instead  of  these  village  symbols,  — 
and  we  shall  both  be  gainers.  The  history  of 
hierarchies  seems  to  show  that  all  religious  error 
consisted  in  making  the  symbol  too  stark  and  solid, 
and  was  at  last  nothing  but  an  excess  of  the  organ 
of  language. 

Swedenborg,  of  all  men  in  the  recent  ages,  stands 
eminently  for  the  translator  of  nature  into  thought. 
I  do  not  know  the  man  in  history  to  whom  things 
stood  so  uniformly  for  words.  Before  him  the 
tnetamorphosis  continually  plays.  Everything  on 
which  his  eye  rests,  obeys  the  impulses  of  moral 
nature.  The  figs  become  grapes  whilst  he  eats 


THE  POET.  39 

them.  When  some  of  his  angels  affirmed  a  truth, 
the  laurel  twig  which  they  held  blossomed  in  their 
hands.  The  noise  which  at  a  distance  appeared 
like  gnashing  and  thumping,  on  coming  nearer  was 
found  to  be  the  voice  of  disputants.  The  men  in 
one  of  his  visions,  seen  in  heavenly  light,  appeared 
like  dragons,  and  seemed  in  darkness ;  but  to  each 
other  they  appeared  as  men,  and  when  the  light 
from  heaven  shone  into  their  cabin,  they  com 
plained  of  the  darkness,  and  were  compelled  to 
shut  the  window  that  they  might  see. 

There  was  this  perception  in  him  which  makes 
the  poet  or  seer  an  object  of  awe  and  terror,  name 
ly  that  the  same  man  or  society  of  men  may  wear 
one  aspect  to  themselves  and  their  companions, 
and  a  different  aspect  to  higher  intelligences.  Cer 
tain  priests,  whom  he  describes  as  conversing  very 
learnedly  together,  appeared  to  the  children  who 
were  at  some  distance,  like  dead  horses ;  and  many 
the  like  misappearances.  And  instantly  the  mind 
inquires  whether  these  fishes  under  the  bridge,  yon 
der  oxen  in  the  pasture,  those  dogs  in  the  yard,  are 
immutably  fishes,  oxen,  and  dogs,  or  only  so  appear 
to  me.  and  perchance  to  themselves  appear  upright 
men  ;  and  whether  I  appear  as  a  man  to  all  eyes. 
The  Bramins  and  Pythagoras  propounded  the  same 
question,  and  if  any  poet  has  witnessed  the  trans 
formation  he  doubtless  found  it  in  harmony  with 


40  THE  POET. 

various  experiences.  We  have  all  seen  changes  aa 
considerable  in  wheat  and  caterpillars.  He  is  the 
poet  and  shall  draw  us  with  love  and  terror,  who 
sees  through  the  flowing  vest  the  firm  nature,  and 
can  declare  it. 

I  look  in  vain  for  the  poet  whom  I  describe, 
We  do  not  with  sufficient  plainness  or  sufficient 
profoundness  address  ourselves  to  life,  nor  dare  we 
chaunt  our  own  times  and  social  circumstance.  If 
we  filled  the  day  with  bravery,  we  should  not 
shrink  from  celebrating  it.  Time  and  nature  yield 
us  many  gifts,  but  not  yet  the  timely  man,  the  new 
religion,  the  reconciler,  whom  all  things  await. 
Dante's  praise  is  that  he  dared  to  write  his  auto 
biography  in  colossal  cipher,  or  into  universality. 
We  have  yet  had  no  genius  in  America,  with  tyran 
nous  eye,  which  knew  the  value  of  our  incompa 
rable  materials,  and  saw,  in  the  barbarism  and 
materialism  of  the  times,  another  carnival  of  the 
same  gods  whose  picture  he  so  much  admires  in 
Homer  ;  then  in  the  Middle  Age ;  then  in  Calvin 
ism.  Banks  and  tariffs,  the  newspaper  and  caucus, 
Methodism  and  Unitarianism,  are  flat  and  dull  to 
dull  people,  but  rest  on  the  same  foundations  of 
wonder  as  the  town  of  Troy  and  the  temple  of  Del 
phi,  and  are  as  swiftly  passing  away.  Our  logroll' 
ing,  our  stumps  and  their  politics,  our  fisheries, 
our  Negroes  and  Indians,  our  boats  and  our  repu 


THE  POET.  41 

diations,  the  wrath  of  rogues  and  the  pusillanimity 
of  honest  men,  the  northern  trade,  the  southern 
planting,  the  western  clearing,  Oregon  and  Texas, 
are  yet  unsung.  Yet  America  is  a  poem  in  our 
eyes  ;  its  ample  geography  dazzles  the  imagination, 
and  it  will  not  wait  long  for  metres.  If  I  have  not 
found  that  excellent  combination  of  gifts  in  my 
countrymen  which  I  seek,  neither  could  I  aid  my 
self  to  fix  the  idea  of  the  poet  by  reading  now  and 
then  in  Chalmers's  collection  of  five  centuries  of 
English  poets.  These  are  wits  more  than  poets, 
though  there  have  been  poets  among  them.  But 
when  we  adhere  to  the  ideal  of  the  poet,  we  have 
our  difficulties  even  with  Milton  and  Homer.  Mil 
ton  is  too  literary,  and  Homer  too  literal  and  his 
torical. 

But  I  am  not  wise  enough  for  a  national  criti 
cism,  and  must  use  the  old  largeness  a  little  longer, 
to  discharge  my  errand  from  the  muse  to  the  poet 
concerning  his  art. 

Art  is  the  path  of  the  creator  to  his  work.  The 
paths  or  methods  are  ideal  and  eternal,  though  few 
men  ever  see  them ;  not  the  artist  himself  for  years, 
or  for  a  lifetime,  unless  he  come  into  the  conditions. 
The  painter,  the  sculptor,  the  composer,  the  epic 
rhapsodist,  the  orator,  all  partake  one  desire,  namely 
to  express  themselves  symmetrically  and  abundant 
ly,  not  dwarfishly  and  f ragmentarily.  They  found 


42  THE  POET. 

or  put  themselves  in  certain  conditions,  as,  the 
painter  and  sculptor  before  some  impressive  human 
figures  ;  the  orator,  into  the  assembly  of  the  peo 
ple  ;  and  the  others  in  such  scenes  as  each  has 
found  exciting  to  his  intellect ;  and  each  presently 
feels  the  new  desire.  He  hears  a  voice,  he  sees  a 
/beckoning.  Then  he  is  apprised,  with  wonder, 
what  herds  of  demons  hem  him  in.  He  can  no 
more  rest ;  he  says,  with  the  old  painter,  "  By  God 
it  is  in  me  and  must  go  forth  of  me."  He  pursues 
a  beauty,  half  seen,  which  flies  before  him.  The 
poet  pours  out  verses  in  every  solitude.  Most  of 
the  things  he  says  are  conventional,  110  doubt ;  but 
by  and  by  he  says  something  which  is  original  and 
beautiful.  That  charms  him.  He  would  say  noth 
ing  else  but  such  things.  In  our  way  of  talking 
we  say  '  That  is  yours,  this  is  mine  ; '  but  the  poet 
knows  well  that  it  is  not  his  ;  that  it  is  as  strange 
and  beautiful  to  him  as  to  you  ;  he  would  fain  hear 
the  like  eloquence  at  length.  Once  having  tasted 
this  immortal  ichor,  he  cannot  have  enough  of  it, 
and  as  an  admirable  creative  power  exists  in  these 
intellections,  it  is  of  the  last  importance  that  these 
things  get  spoken.  What  a  little  of  all  we  know  is 
said !  What  drops  of  all  the  sea  of  our  science 
are  baled  up !  and  by  what  accident  it  is  that  these 
are  exposed,  when  so  many  secrets  sleep  in  nature  J 
Hence  the  necessity  of  speech  and  song;  hence 


THE  POET.  43 

these  throbs  and  heart-beatings  in  the  orator,  at 
the  door  of  the  assembly,  to  the  end  namely  that 
thought  may  be  ejaculated  as  Logos,  or  Word. 

Doubt  not,  O  poet,  but  persist.  Say  4  It  is  in 
me,  and  shall  out.'  Stand  there,  balked  and  dumb, 
stuttering  and  stammering,  hissed  and  hooted,  stand 
and  strive,  until  at  last  rage  draw  out  of  thee  that 
dream-power  which  every  night  shows  thee  is  thine 
own  ;  a  power  transcending  all  limit  and  privacy, 
and  by  virtue  of  which  a  man  is  the  conductor  of 
the  whole  river  of  electricity.  Nothing  walks,  or 
creeps,  or  grows,  or  exists,  which  must  not  in  turn 
arise  and  walk  before  him  as  exponent  of  his  mean 
ing.  Comes  he  to  that  power,  his  genius  is  no 
longer  exhaustible.  All  the  creatures  by  pairs  and 
by  tribes  pour  into  his  mind  as  into  a  Noah's  ark, 
to  come  forth  again  to  people  a  new  world.  This 
is  like  the  stock  of  air  for  our  respiration  or  for 
the  combustion  of  our  fireplace ;  not  a  measure  of 
gallons,  but  the  entire  atmosphere  if  wanted.  And 
therefore  the  rich  poets,  as  Homer,  Chaucer,  Shak- 
speare,  and  Raphael,  have  obviously  no  limits  to 
their  works  except  the  limits  of  their  lifetime,  and 
resemble  a  mirror  carried  through  the  street,  ready 
to  render  an  image  of  every  created  thing. 

O  poet !  a  new  nobility  is  conferred  in  groves 
and  pastures,  and  not  in  castles  or  by  the  sword- 
blade  any  longer.  The  conditions  are  hard,  but 


44  THE  POET. 

equal.  Thou  shalt  leave  the  world,  and  know  the 
muse  only.  Thou  shalt  not  know  any  longer  the 
times,  customs,  graces,  politics,  or  opinions  of  men, 
but  shalt  take  all  from  the  muse.  For  the  time  of 
towns  is  tolled  from  the  world  by  funereal  chimes, 
but  in  nature  the  universal  hours  are  counted  by 
succeeding  tribes  of  animals  and  plants,  and  by 
growth  of  joy  on  joy.  God  wills  also  that  thou  ab 
dicate  a  manifold  and  duplex  life,  and  that  thou  be 
content  that  others  speak  for  thee.  Others  shall 
be  thy  gentlemen  and  shall  represent  all  courtesy 
and  worldly  life  for  thee  ;  others  shall  do  the  great 
and  resounding  actions  also.  Thou  shalt  lie  close 
hid  with  nature,  and  canst  not  be  afforded  to  the 
Capitol  or  the  Exchange.  The  world  is  full  of  re 
nunciations  and  apprenticeships,  and  this  is  thine  ; 
thou  must  pass  for  a  fool  and  a  churl  for  a  long 
season.  This  is  the  screen  and  sheath  in  which 
Pan  has  protected  his  well-beloved  flower,  and  thou 
shalt  be  known  only  to  thine  own,  and  they  shall 
console  thee  with  tenderest  love.  And  thou  shalt 
not  be  able  to  rehearse  the  names  of  thy  friends  in 
thy  verse,  for  an  old  shame  before  the  holy  ideal. 
And  this  is  the  reward ;  that  the  ideal  shall  be  real 
to  thee,  and  the  impressions  of  the  actual  world 
shall  fall  like  summer  rain,  copious,  but  not  trouble 
some  to  thy  invulnerable  essence.  Thou  shalt  have 
the  whole  land  for  thy  park  and  manor,  the  sea  for 


THE  POET.  45 

thy  bath  and  navigation,  without  tax  and  without 
envy ;  the  woods  and  the  rivers  thou  shalt  own, 
and  thou  shalt  possess  that  wherein  others  are  only 
tenants  and  boarders.  Thou  true  land-lord !  sea- 
lord  !  air  -  lord  !  Wherever  snow  falls  or  water 
flows  or  birds  fly,  wherever  day  and  night  meet  in 
twilight,  wherever  the  blue  heaven  is  hung  by 
clouds  or  sown  with  stars,  wherever  are  forms  with 
transparent  boundaries,  wherever  are  outlets  into 
celestial  space,  wherever  is  danger,  and  awe,  and 
love,  —  there  is  Beauty,  plenteous  as  rain,  shed  for 
thee,  and  though  thou  shouldst  walk  the  world  over, 
thou  shalt  not  be  able  to  find  a  condition  inoppor 
tune  or  ignoble. 


EXPERIENCE. 


The  lords  of  life,  the  lords  of  life,— 
I  saw  them  pass, 
In  their  own  guise, 
Like  and  unlike, 
Portly  and  grim, 
Use  and  Surprise, 
Surface  and  Dream, 
Succession  swift,  and  spectral  Wrong, 
Temperament  without  a  tongue, 
And  the  inventor  of  the  game 
Omnipresent  without  name  ;  — 
Some  to  see,  some  to  be  guessed, 
They  marched  from  east  to  west : 
Little  man,  least  of  all, 
Among  the  legs  of  his  guardians  tall, 
Walked  about  with  puzzled  look  :  — 
Him  by  the  hand  dear  Nature  took ; 
Dearest  Nature,  strong  and  kind, 
Whispered,  '  Darling,  never  mind ! 
To-morrow  they  will  wear  another  face, 
The  founder  thou !  these  are  thy  race !  * 


n. 

EXPERIENCE. 


WHERE  do  we  find  ourselves?  In  a  series  of 
which  we  do  not  know  the  extremes,  and  believe 
that  it  has  none.  We  wake  and  find  ourselves  on 
a  stair ;  there  are  stairs  below  us,  which  we  seem 
to  have  ascended  ;  there  are  stairs  above  us,  many 
a  one,  which  go  upward  and  out  of  sight.  But  the 
Genius  which  according  to  the  old  belief  stands  at 
the  door  by  which  we  enter,  and  gives  us  the  lethe 
to  drink,  that  we  may  tell  no  tales,  mixed  the  cup 
too  strongly,  and  we  cannot  shake  off  the  lethargy 
now  at  noonday.  Sleep  lingers  all  our  lifetime 
about  our  eyes,  as  night  hovers  all  day  in  the  boughs 
of  the  fir-tree.  All  things  swim  and  glitter.  Our 
life  is  not  so  much  threatened  as  our  perception. 
Ghostlike  we  glide  through  nature,  and  should  not 
know  our  place  again.  Did  our  birth  fall  in  some 
fit  of  indigence  and  frugality  in  nature,  that  she 
was  so  sparing  of  her  fire  and  so  liberal  of  her  earth 
that  it  appears  to  us  that  we  lack  the  affirmative 
principle,  and  though  we  have  health  and  reason, 

VOL.  III.  4 


50  ILLUSION. 

yet  we  have  no  superfluity  of  spirit  for  new  creation? 
We  have  enough  to  live  and  bring  the  year  about, 
but  not  an  ounce  to  impart  or  to  invest.  Ah  that 
our  Genius  were  a  little  more  of  a  genius !  We  are 
like  millers  on  the  lower  levels  of  a  stream,  when 
the  factories  above  them  have  exhausted  the  water, 
We  too  fancy  that  the  upper  people  must  have  raised 
their  dams. 

If  any  of  us  knew  what  we  were  doing,  or  where 
we  are  going,  then  when  we  think  we  best  know ! 
We  do  not  know  to-day  whether  we  are  busy  or  idle. 
In  times  when  we  thought  ourselves  indolent,  we 
have  afterwards  discovered  that  much  was  accom 
plished  and  much  was  begun  in  us.  All  our  days  are 
so  unprofitable  while  they  pass,  that  't  is  wonderful 
where  or  when  we  ever  got  anything  of  this  which 
we  call  wisdom,  poetry,  virtue.  We  never  got  it 
on  any  dated  calendar  day.  Some  heavenly  days 
must  have  been  intercalated  somewhere,  like  those 
that  Hermes  won  with  dice  of  the  Moon,  that  Osiris 
might  be  born.  It  is  said  all  martyrdoms  looked 
mean  when  they  were  suffered.  Every  ship  is  a 
romantic  object,  except  that  we  sail  in.  Embark, 
and  the  romance  quits  our  vessel  and  hangs  on 
every  other  sail  in  the  horizon.  Our  life  looks 
trivial,  and  we  shun  to  record  it.  Men  seem  to 
have  learned  of  the  horizon  the  art  of  perpetual  re 
treating  and  reference.  *  Yonder  uplands  are  rich 


EXPERIENCE.  51 

pasturage,  and  my  neighbor  has  fertile  meadow, 
but  my  field,'  says  the  querulous  farmer,  '  only  holds 
the  world  together.'  I  quote  another  man's  saying ; 
unluckily  that  other  withdraws  himself  in  the  same 
way,  and  quotes  me.  'T  is  the  trick  of  nature  thus 
to  degrade  to-day ;  a  good  deal  of  buzz,  and  some 
where  a  result  slipped  magically  in.  Every  roof  is 
agreeable  to  the  eye  until  it  is  lifted ;  then  we  find 
tragedy  and  moaning  women  and  hard-eyed  hus 
bands  and  deluges  of  lethe,  and  the  men  ask, 
'What's  the  news?'  as  if  the  old  were  so  bad. 
How  many  individuals  can  we  count  in  society  ?  how 
many  actions  ?  how  many  opinions  ?  So  much  of 
our  time  is  preparation,  so  much  is  routine,  and  so 
much  retrospect,  that  the  pith  of  each  man's  genius 
contracts  itself  to  a  very  few  hours.  The  history 
of  literature  —  take  the  net  result  of  Tiraboschi, 
Warton,  or  Schlegel  —  is  a  sum  of  very  few  ideas 
and  of  very  few  original  tales ;  all  the  rest  being 
variation  of  these.  So  in  this  great  society  wide 
lying  around  us,  a  critical  analysis  would  find  very 
few  spontaneous  actions.  It  is  almost  all  custom 
and  gross  sense.  There  are  even  few  opinions,  and 
these  seem  organic  in  the  speakers,  and  do  not  dis 
turb  the  universal  necessity. 

What  opium  is  instilled  into  all  disaster!  It 
shows  formidable  as  we  approach  it,  but  there  is  at 
last  no  rough  rasping  friction,  but  the  most  slippery 


52  ILLUSION. 

sliding  surfaces;  we  fall  soft  on  a  thought;  Ate 
Dea  is  gentle,  — 

"Over  men's  heads  walking  aloft, 
With  tender  feet  treading  so  soft." 

People  grieve  and  bemoan  themselves,  but  it  is  not 
half  so  bad  with  them  as  they  say.  There  are  moods 
in  which  we  court  suffering,  in  the  hope  that  here 
at  least  we  shall  find  reality,  sharp  peaks  and  edges 
of  truth.  But  it  turns  out  to  be  scene-painting  and 
counterfeit.  The  only  thing  grief  has  taught  me  is 
to  know  how  shallow  it  is.  That,  like  all  the  rest, 
plays  about  the  surface,  and  never  introduces  me 
into  the  reality,  for  contact  with  which  we  would 
even  pay  the  costly  price  of  sons  and  lovers.  Was 
it  Boscovich  who  found  out  that  bodies  never  come 
in  contact  ?  Well,  souls  never  touch  their  objects. 
An  innavigable  sea  washes  with  silent  waves  be 
tween  us  and  the  things  we  aim  at  and  converse 
with.  Grief  too  will  make  us  idealists.  In  the 
death  of  my  son,  now  more  than  two  years  ago,  I 
seem  to  have  lost  a  beautiful  estate,  —  no  more.  I 
cannot  get  it  nearer  to  me.  If  to-morrow  I  should 
be  informed  of  the  bankruptcy  of  my  principal 
debtors,  the  loss  of  my  property  would  be  a  great 
inconvenience  to  me,  perhaps,  for  many  years  ;  but 
it  would  leave  me  as  it  found  me,  —  neither  better 
nor  worse.  So  is  it  with  this  calamity ;  it  does  not 


EXPERIENCE.  53 

touch  me ;  something  which  I  fancied  was  a  part  of 
me,  which  could  not  be  torn  away  without  tear 
ing  me  nor  enlarged  without  enriching  me,  falls  off 
from  me  and  leaves  no  scar.  It  was  caducous.  I 
grieve  that  grief  can  teach  me  nothing,  nor  carry 
me  one  step  into  real  nature.  The  Indian  who  was 
laid  under  a  curse  that  the  wind  should  not  blow 
on  him,  nor  water  flow  to  him,  nor  fire  burn  him,  is 
a  type  of  us  all.  The  dearest  events  are  summer- 
rain,  and  we  the  Para  coats  that  shed  every  drop. 
Nothing  is  left  us  now  but  death.  We  look  to  that 
with  a  grim  satisfaction,  saying  There  at  least  is 
reality  that  will  not  dodge  us. 

I  take  this  evanescence  and  lubricity  of  all  ob 
jects,  which  lets  them  slip  through  our  fingers  then 
when  we  clutch  hardest,  to  be  the  most  unhand 
some  part  of  our  condition.  Nature  does  not  like 
to  be  observed,  and  likes  that  we  should  be  her 
fools  and  playmates.  We  may  have  the  sphere  for 
our  cricket-ball,  but  not  a  berry  for  our  philosophy. 
Direct  strokes  she  never  gave  us  power  to  make  ; 
all  our  blows  glance,  all  our  hits  are  accidents. 
Our  relations  to  each  other  are  oblique  and  cas 
ual. 

Dream  delivers  us  to  dream,  and  there  is  no  end 
to  illusion.  Life  is  a  train  of  moods  like  a  string 
of  beads,  and  as  we  pass  through  them  they  prove 


54  TEMPER  A  MEN  T. 

to  be  many-colored  lenses  which  paint  the  world 
their  own  hue,  and  each  shows  only  what  lies  in  its 
focus.  From  the  mountain  you  see  the  mountain. 
We  animate  what  we  can,  and  we  see  only  what 
we  animate.  Nature  and  books  belong  to  the  eyes 
that  see  them.  It  depends  on  the  mood  of  the 
man  whether  he  shall  see  the  sunset  or  the  fine 
poem.  There  are  always  sunsets,  and  there  is  al 
ways  genius  ;  but  only  a  few  hours  so  serene  that 
we  can  relish  nature  or  criticism.  The  more  or 
less  depends  on  structure  or  temperament.  Tem 
perament  is  the  iron  wire  on  which  the  beads  are 
strung.  Of  what  use  is  fortune  or  talent  to  a  cold 
and  defective  nature  ?  Who  cares  what  sensibility 
or  discrimination  a  man  has  at  some  time  shown,  if 
he  falls  asleep  in  his  chair  ?  or  it  he  laugh  and  gig 
gle  ?  or  if  he  apologize  ?  or  is  infected  with  ego 
tism  ?  or  thinks  of  his  dollar  ?  or  cannot  go  by  food  ? 
or  has  gotten  a  child  in  his  boyhood  ?  Of  what 
use  is  genius,  if  the  organ  is  too  convex  or  too  con 
cave  and  cannot  find  a  focal  distance  within  the 
actual  horizon  of  human  life  ?  Of  what  use,  if  the 
brain  is  too  cold  or  too  hot,  and  the  man  does  not 
care  enough  for  results  to  stimulate  him  to  experi 
ment,  and  hold  him  up  in  it  ?  or  if  the  web  is  too 
finely  woven,  too  irritable  by  pleasure  and  pain,  so 
that  life  stagnates  from  too  much  reception  without 
due  outlet?  Of  what  use  to  make  heroic  vows  of 


EXPERIENCE.  55 

amendment,  if  the  same  old  law-breaker  is  to  keep 
them?  What  cheer  can  the  religious  sentiment 
yield,  when  that  is  suspected  to  be  secretly  depend 
ent  on  the  seasons  of  the  year  and  the  state  of  the 
blood?  I  knew  a  witty  physician  who  found  the 
creed  in  the  biliary  duct,  and  used  to  affirm  that  if 
there  was  disease  in  the  liver,  the  man  became  a 
Calvinist,  and  if  that  organ  was  sound,  he  became 
a  Unitarian.  Very  mortifying  is  the  reluctant  ex 
perience  that  some  unfriendly  excess  or  imbecility 
neutralizes  the  promise  of  genius.  We  see  young 
men  who  owe  us  a  new  world,  so  readily  and  lav 
ishly  they  promise,  but  they  never  acquit  the  debt ; 
they  die  young  and  dodge  the  account;  or  if  they 
live  they  lose  themselves  in  the  crowd. 

Temperament  also  enters  fully  into  the  system 
of  illusions  and  shuts  us  in  a  prison  of  glass  which 
we  cannot  see.  There  is  an  optical  illusion  about 
every  person  we  meet.  In  truth  they  are  all  crea 
tures  of  given  temperament,  which  will  appear  in  a 
given  character,  whose  boundaries  they  will  never 
pass  ;  but  we  look  at  them,  they  seem  alive,  and  we 
presume  there  is  impulse  in  them.  In  the  moment 
it  seems  impulse  ;  in  the  year,  in  the  lifetime,  it 
turns  out  to  be  a  certain  uniform  tune  which  the 
revolving  barrel  of  the  music-box  must  play.  Men 
resist  the  conclusion  in  the  morning,  but  adopt  it 
as  the  evening  wears  on,  that  temper  prevails  over 


56  TEMPERAMENT. 

everything  of  time,  place,  and  condition,  and  is  in. 
consumable  in  tlie  flames  of  religion.  Some  modi 
fications  the  moral  sentiment  avails  to  impose,  but 
the  individual  texture  holds  its  dominion,  if  not  to 
bias  the  moral  judgments,  yet  to  fix  the  measure  of 
activity  and  of  enjoyment. 

I  thus  express  the  law  as  it  is  read  from  the  plat 
form  of  ordinary  life,  but  must  not  leave  it  without 
noticing  the  capital  exception.  For  temperament 
is  a  power  which  no  man  willingly  hears  any  one 
praise  but  himself.  On  the  platform  of  physics  we 
Cannot  resist  the  contracting  influences  of  so-called 
science.  Temperament  puts  all  divinity  to  rout.  1 
know  the  mental  proclivity  of  physicians.  I  hear 
the  chuckle  of  the  phrenologists.  Theoretic  kid 
nappers  and  slave-drivers,  they  esteem  each  man 
the  victim  of  another,  who  winds  him  round  his 
finger  by  knowing  the  law  of  his  being;  and,  by 
such  cheap  signboards  as  the  color  of  his  beard  or 
the  slope  of  his  occiput,  reads  the  inventory  of  his 
fortunes  and  character.  The  grossest  ignorance 
does  not  disgust  like  this  impudent  knowmgness. 
The  physicians  say  they  are  not  materialists ;  but 
they  are :  —  Spirit  is  matter  reduced  to  an  extreme 
thinness  :  O  so  thin  !  —  But  the  definition  of  spir 
itual  should  be,  that  which  is  its  own  evidence. 
What  notions  do  they  attach  to  love !  what  to  relig 
ion  I  One  would  not  willingly  pronounce  these 


EXPERIENCE.  57 

words  in  their  hearing,  and  give  them  the  occasion 
to  profane  them.  I  saw  a  gracious  gentleman  who 
adapts  his  conversation  to  the  form  of  the  head  of 
the  man  he  talks  with !  I  had  fancied  that  the  value 
of  life  lay  in  its  inscrutable  possibilities ;  in  the 
fact  that  I  never  know,  in  addressing  myself  to  z 
new  individual,  what  may  befall  me.  I  carry  the 
keys  of  my  castle  in  my  hand,  ready  to  throw  them 
at  the  feet  of  my  lord,  whenever  and  in  what  dis 
guise  soever  he  shall  appear.  I  know  he  is  in  the 
neighborhood,  hidden  among  vagabonds.  Shall  I 
preclude  my  future  by  taking  a  high  seat  and 
kindly  adapting  my  conversation  to  the  shape  of 
heads'?  When  I  come  to  that,  the  doctors  shall 

buy  me  for  a  cent. 6  But,  sir,  medical  history ; 

the  report  to  the  Institute  ;  the  proven  facts  ! '  -  -  I 
distrust  the  facts  and  the  inferences.  Tempera 
ment  is  the  veto  or  limitation-power  in  the  consti 
tution,  very  justly  applied  to  restrain  an  opposite 
excess  in  the  constitution,  but  absurdly  offered  as 
a  bar  to  original  equity.  When  virtue  is  in  pres 
ence,  all  subordinate  powers  sleep.  On  its  own 
level,  or  in  view  of  nature,  temperament  is  final.  I 
see  not,  if  one  be  once  caught  in  this  trap  of  so- 
called  sciences,  any  escape  for  the  man  from  the 
links  of  the  chain  of  physical  necessity.  Given 
such  an  embryo,  such  a  history  must  follow.  On 
this  platform  one  lives  in  a  sty  of  sensualism,  and 


68  SUCCESSION. 

would  soon  come  to  suicide.  But  it  is  impossible 
that  the  creative  power  should  exclude  itself.  Into 
every  intelligence  there  is  a  door  which  is  never 
closed,  through  which  the  creator  passes.  The  in 
tellect,  seeker  of  absolute  truth,  or  the  heart,  lover 
of  absolute  good,  intervenes  for  our  succor,  and  at 
one  whisper  of  these  high  powers  we  awake  from 
ineffectual  struggles  with  this  nightmare.  We  hurl 
it  into  its  own  hell,  and  cannot  again  contract  our 
selves  to  so  base  a  state. 

The  secret  of  the  illusoriness  is  in  the  necessity 
of  a  succession  of  moods  or  objects.  Gladly  we 
would  anchor,  but  the  anchorage  is  quicksand. 
This  onward  trick  of  nature  is  too  strong  for  us  : 
Pcro  si  muove.  When  at  night  I  look  at  the 
moon  and  stars,  I  seem  stationary,  and  they  to 
hurry.  Our  love  of  the  real  draws  us  to  perma 
nence,  but  health  of  body  consists  in  circulation, 
and  sanity  of  mind  in  variety  or  facility  of  associa 
tion.  We  need  change  of  objects.  Dedication  to 
one  thought  is  quickly  odious.  We  house  with  the 
insane,  and  must  humor  them ;  then  conversation 
dies  out.  Once  I  took  such  delight  in  Montaigne 
that  I  thought  I  should  not  need  any  other  book ; 
before  that,  in  Shakspeare ;  then  in  Plutarch ; 
then  in  Plotinus ;  at  one  time  in  Bacon ;  afterwards 
in  Goeths ;  even  in  Bettine  ;  but  now  I  turn  the 


EXPERIENCE.  59 

pages  of  either  of  them  languidly,  whilst  I  still 
cherish  their  genius.  So  with  pictures  ;  each  will 
bear  an  emphasis  of  attention  once,  which  it  cannot 
retain,  though  we  fain  would  continue  to  be  pleased 
in  that  manner.  How  strongly  I  have  felt  of  pic 
tures  that  when  you  have  seen  one  well,  you  must 
take  your  leave  of  it ;  you  shall  never  see  it  again, 
I  have  had  good  lessons  from  pictures  which  I  have 
since  seen  without  emotion  or  remark.  A  deduc 
tion  must  be  made  from  the  opinion  which  even  the 
wise  express  on  a  new  book  or  occurrence.  Their 
opinion  gives  me  tidings  of  their  mood,  and  some 
vague  guess  at  the  new  fact,  but  is  nowise  to  be 
trusted  as  the  lasting  relation  between  that  intellect 
and  that  thing.  The  child  asks,  '  Mamma,  why 
don't  I  like  the  story  as  well  as  when  you  told  it 
me  yesterday  ? '  Alas  !  child  it  is  even  so  with  the 
oldest  cherubim  of  knowledge.  But  will  it  answer 
thy  question  to  say,  Because  thou  wert  born  to  a 
whole  and  this  story  is  a  particular  ?  The  reason 
of  the  pain  this  discovery  causes  us  (and  we  make 
it  late  in  respect  to  works  of  art  and  intellect),  is 
the  plaint  of  tragedy  which  murmurs  from  it  in  re 
gard  to  persons,  to  friendship  and  love. 

That  immobility  and  absence  of  elasticity  which 
we  find  in  the  arts,  we  find  with  more  pain  in  the 
artist.  There  is  no  power  of  expansion  in  men. 
Our  friends  early  appear  to  us  as  representatives  of 


60  SUCCESSION. 

certain  ideas  which  they  never  pass  or  exceed. 
They  stand  on  the  brink  of  the  ocean  of  thought 
and  power,  but  they  never  take  the  single  step  that 
would  bring  them  there.  A  man  is  like  a  bit  of 
Labrador  spar,  which  has  no  lustre  as  you  turn  it 
in  your  hand  until  you  come  to  a  particular  angle ; 
then  it  shows  deep  and  beautiful  colors.  There  is 
no  adaptation  or  universal  applicability  in  men,  but 
each  has  his  special  talent,  and  the  mastery  of  suc 
cessful  men  consists  in  adroitly  keeping  themselves 
where  and  when  that  turn  shall  be  oftenest  to  be 
practised.  We  do  what  we  must,  and  call  it  by 
the  best  names  we  can,  and  would  fain  have  the 
praise  of  having  intended  the  result  which  ensues. 
I  cannot  recall  any  form  of  man  who  is  not  super 
fluous  sometimes.  But  is  not  this  pitiful  ?  Life  is 
not  worth  the  taking,  to  do  tricks  in. 

Of  course  it  needs  the  whole  society  to  give  the 
symmetry  we  seek.  The  party-colored  wheel  must 
revolve  very  fast  to  appear  white.  Something  is 
earned  too  by  conversing  with  so  much  folly  and 
defect.  In  fine,  whoever  loses,  we  are  always  of 
the  gaining  party.  Divinity  is  behind  our  failures 
and  follies  also.  The  plays  of  children  are  non 
sense,  but  very  educative  nonsense.  So  it  is  with 
the  largest  and  solemnest  things,  with  commerce, 
government,  church,  marriage,  and  so  with  the  his 
tory  of  every  man's  bread,  and  the  ways  by  which 


EXPERIENCE.  61 

he  is  to  come  by  it.  Like  a  bird  which  alights  no 
where,  but  hops  perpetually  from  bough  to  bough, 
is  the  Power  which  abides  in  no  man  and  in  no 
woman,  but  for  a  moment  speaks  from  this  one,  and 
for  another  moment  from  that  one. 

But  what  help  from  these  fineries  or  pedantries? 
What  help  from  thought  ?  Life  is  not  dialectics. 
We,  I  think,  in  these  times,  have  had  lessons  enough 
of  the  futility  of  criticism.  Our  young  people  have 
thought  and  written  much  on  labor  and  reform,  and 
for  all  that  they  have  written,  neither  the  world  nor 
themselves  have  got  on  a  step.  Intellectual  tasting 
of  life  will  not  supersede  muscular  activity.  If  a 
man  should  consider  the  nicety  of  the  passage  of  a 
piece  of  bread  down  his  throat,  he  would  starve.  At 
Education-Farm  the  noblest  theory  of  life  sat  on 
the  noblest  figures  of  young  men  and  maidens,  quite 
powerless  and  melancholy.  It  would  not  rake  or 
pitch  a  ton  of  hay ;  it  would  not  rub  down  a  horse ; 
and  the  men  and  maidens  it  left  pale  and  hungry. 
A  political  orator  wittily  compared  our  party  prom 
ises  to  western  roads,  which  opened  stately  enough, 
with  planted  trees  on  either  side  to  tempt ,  the  trav 
eller,  but  soon  became  narrow  and  narrower  and 
ended  in  a  squirrel-track  and  ran  up  a  tree.  So 
does  culture  with  us ;  it  ends  in  headache.  Un 
speakably  sad  and  barren  does  life  look  to  those 


62  SURFACE. 

who  a  few  months  ago  were  dazzled  with  the  splen 
dor  of  the  promise  of  the  times.  "  There  is  now 
no  longer  any  right  course  of  action  nor  any  self- 
devotion  left  among  the  Iranis."  Objections  and 
criticism  we  have  had  our  fill  of.  There  are  objec= 
tions  to  every  course  of  life  and  action,  and  the 
practical  wisdom  infers  an  indiffereiicy,  from  the 
omnipresence  of  objection.  The  whole  frame  of 
things  preaches  indifferency.  Do  not  craze  your 
self  with  thinking,  but  go  about  your  business  any 
where.  Life  is  not  intellectual  or  critical,  but 
sturdy.  Its  chief  good  is  for  well-mixed  people 
who  can  enjoy  what  they  find,  without  question. 
Nature  hates  peeping,  and  our  mothers  speak  her 
very  sense  when  they  say,  "  Children,  eat  your  vict 
uals,  and  say  no  more  of  it.'.'  To  fill  the  hour,  — 
that  is  happiness ;  to  fill  the  hour  and  leave  no  crev 
ice  for  a  repentance  or  an  approval.  We  live  amid 
surfaces,  and  the  true  art  of  life  is  to  skate  well  on 
them.  Under  the  oldest  mouldiest  conventions  a 
man  of  native  force  prospers  just  as  well  as  in  the 
newest  world,  and  that  by  skill  of  handling  and 
treatment.  He  can  take  hold  anywhere.  Life  it 
self  is  a  mixture  of  power  and  form,  and  will  not 
bear  the  least  excess  of  either.  To  finish  the  mo 
ment,  to  find  the  journey's  end  in  every  step  of  the 
road,  to  live  the  greatest  number  of  good  hours,  is 
wisdom.  It  is  not  the  part  of  men,  but  of  fanatics, 


EXPERIENCE.  63 

or  of  mathematicians  if  you  will,  to  say  that  the 
shortness  of  life  considered,  it  is  not  worth  caring 
whether  for  so  short  a  duration  we  were  sprawling 
in  want  or  sitting  high.  Since  our  office  is  with 
moments,  let  us  husband  them.  Five  minutes  of  to 
day  are  worth  as  much  to  me  as  five  minutes  in  the 
next  millennium.  Let  us  be  poised,  and  wise,  and 
our  own,  to-day.  Let  us  treat  the  men  and  women 
well ;  treat  them  as  if  they  were  real ;  perhaps  they 
are.  Men  live  in  their  fancy,  like  drunkards  whose 
hands  are  too  soft  and  tremulous  for  successful  la 
bor.  It  is  a  tempest  of  fancies,  and  the  only  bal 
last  I  know  is  a  respect  to  the  present  hour.  With 
out  any  shadow  of  doubt,  amidst  this  vertigo  of 
shows  and  politics,  I  settle  myself  ever  the  firmer  in 
the  creed  that  we  should  not  postpone  and  refer  and 
wish,  but  do  broad  justice  where  we  are,  by  whom 
soever  we  deal  with,  accepting  our_actual  compan 
ions  and  circumstances,  however  humble  or  odious, 
as  the^  mystic  officials  to  whom  the  universe  has 
delegated  its  whole  pleasure  for  us.  If  these  are 
mean  and  malignant,  their  contentment,  which  is 
the  last  victory  of  justice,  is  a  more  satisfying  echo 
to  the  heart  than  the  voice  of  poets  and  the  casual 
sympathy  of  admirable  persons.  I  think  that  how 
ever  a  thoughtful  man  may  suffer  from  the  defects 
and  absurdities  of  his  company,  he  cannot  without 
affectation  deny  to  any  set  of  men  and  women  a 


64  SURFACE. 

sensibility  to  extraordinary  merit.  The  coarse  and 
frivolous  have  an  instinct  of  superiority,  if  they 
have  not  a  sympathy,  and  honor  it  in  their  blind  ca^ 
pricious  way  with  sincere  homage. 

The  fine  young  people  despise  life,  but  in  me, 
and  in  such  as  with  me  are  free  from  dyspepsia,  and 
to  whom  a  day  is  a  sound  and  solid  good,  it  is  a 
great  excess  of  politeness  to  look  scornful  and  to 
cry  for  company.  I  am  grown  by  sympathy  a  lit 
tle  eager  and  sentimental,  but  leave  me  alone  and 
I  should  relish  every  hour  and  what  it  brought  me, 
the  potluck  otf  the  day,  as  heartily  as  the  oldest  gos 
sip  in  the  bar-room.  I  am  thankful  for  small  mer 
cies.  I  compared  notes  with  one  of  my  friends 
who  expects  everything  of  the  universe  and  is  dis 
appointed  when  anything  is  less  than  the  best,  and 
I  found  that  I  begin  at  the  other  extreme,  expecting 
nothing,  and  am  always  full  of  thanks  for  moderate 
goods.  I  accept  the  clangor  and  jangle  of  contrary 
tendencies.  I  find  my  account  in  sots  and  bores 
also.  They  give  a  reality  to  the  circumjacent  pic 
ture  which  such  a  vanishing  meteorous  appearance 
can  ill  spare.  In  the  morning  I  awake  and  find  the 
old  world,  wife,  babes,  and  mother,  Concord  and 
Boston,  the  dear  old  spiritual  world  and  even  the 
dear  old  devil  not  far  off.  If  we  will  take  the  good 
we  find,  asking  no  questions,  we  shall  have  heaping 
measures.  The  great  gifts  are  not  got  by  analysis, 


EXPERIENCE.  65 

Everything  good  is  on  the  highway.  The  middle 
region  of  our  being  is  the  temperate  zone.  We 
may  climb  into  the  thin  and  cold  realm  of  pure 
geometry  and  lifeless  science,  or  sink  into  that  of 
sensation.  Between  these  extremes  is  the  equator 
of  life,  of  thought,  of  spirit,  of  poetry,  —  a  narrow 
belt.  Moreover,  in  popular  experience  everything 
good  is  on  the  highway.  A  collector  peeps  into  all 
the  picture-shops  of  Europe  for  a  landscape  of  Pous- 
sin,  a  crayon-sketch  of  Salvator  ;  but  the  Transfig 
uration,  the  Last  Judgment,  the  Communion  of  St 
Jerome,  and  what  are  as  transcendent  as  these,  are 
on  the  walls  of  the  Vatican,  the  Uffizii,  or  the 
Louvre,  where  every  footman  may  see  them;  to 
say  nothing  of  Nature's  pictures  in  every  street,  of 
sunsets  and  sunrises  every  day,  and  the  sculpture  of 
the  human  body  never  absent.  A  collector  recently 
bought  at  public  auction,  in  London,  for  one  hun 
dred  and  fifty-seven  guineas,  an  autograph  of  Shak- 
speare ;  but  for  nothing  a  school-boy  can  read  Ham 
let  and  can  detect  secrets  of  highest  concernment 
yet  unpublished  therein.  I  think  I  will  never  read 
any  but  the  commonest  books,  —  the  Bible,  Homer, 
Dante,  Shakspeare,  and  Milton.  Then  we  are  im 
patient  of  so  public  a  life  and  planet,  and  run  hither 
and  thither  for  nooks  and  secrets.  The  imagination 
delights  in  the  woodcraft  of  Indians,  trappers,  and 
t>ee-hunters.  We  fancy  that  we  are  strangers,  and 

VOL.  in.  5 


66  SURFACE. 

not  so  intimately  domesticated  in  the  planet  as  the 
wild  man  and  the  wild  beast  and  bird.  But  the  ex 
clusion  reaches  them  also ;  reaches  the  climbing,  fly 
ing,  gliding,  feathered  and  four-footed  man.  Fox 
and  woodchuck,  hawk  and  snipe  and  bittern,  when 
nearly  seen,  have  no  more  root  in  the  deep  world 
than  man,  and  are  just  such  superficial  tenants  of 
the  globe.  Then  the  new  molecular  philosophy 
shows  astronomical  interspaces  betwixt  atom  and 
atom,  shows  that  the  world  is  all  outside ;  it  has  no 
inside. 

The  mid-world  is  best.  Nature,  as  we  know  her, 
is  no  saint.  The  lights  of  the  church,  the  ascetics, 
Gentoos,  and  corn-eaters,  she  does  not  distinguish 
by  any  favor.  She  comes  eating  and  drinking  and 
sinning.  Her  darlings,  the  great,  the  strong,  the 
beautiful,  are  not  children  of  our  law  ;  do  not  come 
out  of  the  Sunday  School,  nor  weigh  their  food, 
nor  punctually  keep  the  commandments.  If  we 
will  be  strong  with  her  strength  we  must  not  har 
bor  such  disconsolate  consciences,  borrowed  too 
from  the  consciences  of  other  nations.  We  must 
set  up  the  strong  present  tense  against  all  the  ru 
mors  of  wrath,  past  or  to  come.  So  many  things 
are  unsettled  which  it  is  of  the  first  importance  to 
settle  ;  —  and,  pending  their  settlement,  we  will  do 
as  we  do.  Whilst  the  debate  goes  forward  on  the 
equity  of  commerce,  and  will  not  be  closed  for  a 


EXPERIENCE.  67 

century  c  r  two,  New  and  Old  England  may  keep 
shop.  Law  of  copyright  and  international  copy 
right  is  to  be  discussed,  and  in  the  interim  we  will 
sell  our  books  for  the  most  we  can.  Expediency  of 
literature,  reason  of  literature,  lawfulness  of  writ 
ing  down  a  thought,  is  questioned  ;  much  is  to  say 
on  both  sides,  and,  while  the  fight  waxes  hot,  thou,, 
dearest  scholar,  stick  to  thy  foolish  task,  add  a  line 
every  hour,  and  between  whiles  add  a  line.  Right 
to  hold  land,  right  of  property,  is  disputed,  and 
the  conventions  convene,  and  before  the  vote  is 
taken,  dig  away  in  your  garden,  and  spend  your 
earnings  as  a  waif  or  godsend  to  all  serene  and 
beautiful  purposes.  Life  itself  is  a  bubble  and  a 
skepticism,  and  a  sleep  within  a  sleep.  Grant  it, 
and  as  much  more  as  they  will,  —  but  thou,  God's 
darling  !  heed  thy  private  dream ;  thou  wilt  not  be 
missed  in  the  scorning  and  skepticism  ;  there  are 
enough  of  them  ;  stay  there  in  thy  closet  and  toil 
until  the  rest  are  agreed  what  to  do  about  it.  Thy 
sickness,  they  say,  and  thy  puny  habit  require  that 
thou  do  this  or  avoid  that,  but  know  that  thy  life 
is  a  flitting  state,  a  tent  for  a  night,  and  do  thou, 
sick  or  well,  finish  that  stint.  Thou  art  sick,  but 
shalt  not  be  worse,  and  the  universe,  which  holds 
thee  dear,  shall  be  the  better. 

Human  life  is  made  up   of  the  two  elements, 
power  and  form,  and  the  proportion  must  be  inva- 


68  SURFACE. 

riably  kept  if  we  would  have  it  sweet  and  sound, 
Each  of  these  elements  in  excess  makes  a  mischief 
as  hurtful  as  its  defect.  Everything  runs  to  ex 
cess  ;  every  good  quality  is  noxious  if  unmixed, 
rtnd,  to  carry  the  danger  to  the  edge  of  ruin,  na 
ture  causes  each  man's  peculiarity  to  superabound. 
Here,  among  the  farms,  we  adduce  the  scholars  as 
examples  of  this  treachery.  They  are  nature's  vic 
tims  of  expression.  You  who  see  the  artist,  the 
orator,  the  poet,  too  near,  and  find  their  life  no 
more  excellent  than  that  of  mechanics  or  farm 
ers,  and  themselves  victims  of  partiality,  very  hol 
low  and  haggard,  and  pronounce  them  failures,  not 
heroes,  but  quacks,  —  conclude  very  reasonably 
that  these  arts  are  not  for  man,  but  are  disease. 
Yet  nature  will  not  bear  you  out.  Irresistible  na 
ture  made  men  such,  and  makes  legions  more  of 
such,  every  day.  You  love  the  boy  reading  in  a 
book,  gazing  at  a  drawing  or  a  cast ;  yet  what  are 
these  millions  who  read  and  behold,  but  incipient 
writers  and  sculptors  ?  Add  a  little  more  of  that 
quality  which  now  reads  and  sees,  and  they  will 
seize  the  pen  and  chisel.  And  if  one  remembers 
how  innocently  he  began  to  be  an  artist,  he  per 
ceives  that  nature  joined  with  his  enemy.  A  man 
is  a  golden  impossibility.  The  line  he  must  walk 
is  a  hair's  breadth.  The  wise  through  excess  of 
wisdom  is  made  a  fool. 


EXPERIENCE.  69 

How  easily,  if  fate  would  suffer  it,  we  might 
keep  forever  these  beautiful  limits,  and  adjust  our 
selves,  once  for  all,  to  the  perfect  calculation  of  the 
kingdom  of  known  cause  and  effect.  In  the  street 
and  in  the  newspapers,  life  appears  so  plain  a  busi 
ness  that  manly  resolution  and  adherence  to  the 
multiplication-table  through  all  weathers  will  in 
sure  success.  But  ah  !  presently  comes  a  day,  or  is 
it  only  a  half-hour,  with  its  angel-whispering,  — 
which  discomfits  the  conclusions  of  nations  and  of 
years !  To-morrow  again  every  thing  looks  real 
and  angular,  the  habitual  standards  are  reinstated, 
common  sense  is  as  rare  as  genius,  —  is  the  basis 
of  genius,  and  experience  is  hands  and  feet  to  every 
enterprise; — and  yet,  he  who  should  do  his  busi 
ness  on  this  understanding  would  be  quickly  bank 
rupt.  Power  keeps  quite  another  road  than  the 
turnpikes  of  choice  and  will ;  namely  the  subterra 
nean  and  invisible  tunnels  and  channels  of  life.  It 
is  ridiculous  that  we  are  diplomatists,  and  doctors, 
and  considerate  people ;  there  are  no  dupes  like 
these.  Life  is  a  series  of  surprises,  and  would  not 
be  worth  taking  or  keeping  if  it  were  not.  God 
delights  to  isolate  us  every  day,  and  hide  from  us 
the  past  and  the  future.  We  would  look  about  us, 
but  with  grand  politeness  he  draws  down  before  us 
an  impenetrable  screen  of  purest  sky,  and  another 
behind  us  of  purest  sky.  *  You  will  not  remember,' 


70  SURPRISE. 

he  seems  to  say,  c  and  you  will  not  expect.'  All 
good  conversation,  manners,  and  action,  come  from 
a  spontaneity  which  forgets  usages  and  makes  the 
moment  great.  Nature  hates  calculators  ;  her 
methods  are  saltatory  and  impulsive.  Man  lives 
by  pulses  ;  our  organic  movements  are  such  ;  and 
the  chemical  and  ethereal  agents  are  undulatory 
and  alternate  ;  and  the  mind  goes  antagonizing  on, 
and  never  prospers  but  by  fits.  We  thrive  by  cas 
ualties.  Our  chief  experiences  have  been  casual. 
The  most  attractive  class  of  people  are  those  who 
are  powerful  obliquely  and  not  by  the  direct  stroke ; 
men  of  genius,  but  not  yet  accredited ;  one  gets  the 
cheer  of  their  light  without  paying  too  great  a  tax. 
Theirs  is  the  beauty  of  the  bird  or  the  morning 
light,  and  not  of  art.  In  the  thought  of  genius 
there  is  always  a  surprise ;  and  the  moral  sentiment 
is  well  called  "  the  newness,"  for  it  is  never  other  ; 
as  new  to  the  oldest  intelligence  as  to  the  young 
child  ;  —  "  the  kingdom  that  cometh  without  obser 
vation."  In  like  manner,  for  practical  success, 
there  must  not  be  too  much  design.  A  man  will 
not  be  observed  in  doing  that  which  he  can  do 
best.  There  is  a  certain  magic  about  his  properest 
action  which  stupefies  your  powers  of  observation, 
so  that  though  it  is  done  before  you,  you  wist  not 
of  it.  The  art  of  life  has  a  pudency,  and  will  not 
be  exposed.  Every  man  is  an  impossibility  until 


EXPERIENCE.  71 

he  is  born  ;  every  thing  impossible  until  we  see  a 
success.  The  ardors  of  piety  agree  at  last  with  the 
coldest  skepticism,  —  that  nothing  is  of  us  or  our 
works,  —  that  all  is  of  God.  Nature  will  not  spare 
us  the  smallest  leaf  of  laurel.  All  writing  comes 
by  the  grace  of  God,  and  all  doing  and  having.  I 
would  gladly  be  moral  and  keep  due  metes  and 
bounds,  which  I  dearly  love,  and  allow  the  most  to 
the  will  of  man ;  but  1  have  set  my  heart  on  honesty 
in  this  chapter,  and  I  can  see  nothing  at  last,  in 
success  or  failure,  than  more  or  less  of  vital  force 
supplied  from  the  Eternal.  The  results  of  life  are 
uncalculated  and  uncalculable.  The  years  teach 
much  which  the  days  never  know.  The  persons 
who  compose  our  company,  converse,  and  come  and 
go,  and  design  and  execute  many  things,  and  some 
what  comes  of  it  all,  but  an  unlooked-for  result. 
The  individual  is  always  mistaken.  He  designed 
many  things,  and  drew  in  other  persons  as  coadju 
tors,  quarrelled  with  some  or  all,  blundered  much, 
and  something  is  done ;  all  are  a  little  advanced, 
but  the  individual  is  always  mistaken.  It  turns 
out  somewhat  new  and  very  unlike  what  he  prom 
ised  himself. 
f 

The  ancients,  struck  with  this  irreducibleness  of 
the  elements  of  human  life  to  calculation,  exalted 
Chance  into  a  divinity ;  but  that  is  to  stay  too  long 


72  REALITY. 

at  the  spark,  which  glitters  truly  at  one  point,  but 
the  universe  is  warm  with  the  latency  of  the  same 
fire.  The  miracle  of  life  which  will  not  be  ex 
pounded  but  will  remain  a  miracle,  introduces  a 
new  element.  In  the  growth  of  the  embryo,  Sir 
Evcrard  Home  I  think  noticed  that  the  evolution 
was  not  from  one  central  point,  but  coactive  from 
three  or  more  points.  Life  has  no  memory.  That 
which  proceeds  in  succession  might  be  remembered, 
but  that  which  is  coexistent,  or  ejaculated  from  a 
deeper  cause,  as  yet  far  from  being  conscious, 
knows  not  its  own  tendency.  So  is  it  with  us,  now 
skeptical  or  without  unity,  because  immersed  in 
forms  and  effects  all  seeming  to  be  of  equal  yet 
hostile  value,  and  now  religious,  whilst  in  the  re 
ception  of  spiritual  law.  Bear  with  these  distrac 
tions,  with  this  coetaneous  growth  of  the  parts; 
they  will  one  day  be  members,  and  obey  one  will. 
On  that  one  will,  on  that  secret  cause,  they  nail  our 
attention  and  hope.  Life  is  hereby  melted  into  an 
expectation  or  a  religion.  Underneath  the  inhar 
monious  and  trivial  particulars,  is  a  musical  per 
fection  ;  the  Ideal  journeying  always  with  us,  the 
heaven  without  rent  or  seam.  Do  but  observe  the 
mode  of  our  illumination.  When  I  converse  with 
a  profound  mind,  or  if  at  any  time  being  alone  I 
liave  good  thoughts,  I  do  not  at  once  arrive  at  sat 
isfactions,  as  when,  being  thirsty,  I  drink  water ;  01 


EXPERIENCE,  73 

go  to  the  fire,  being  cold ;  no !  but  I  am  at  first  ap 
prised  of  my  vicinity  to  a  new  and  excellent  region 
of  life.  By  persisting  to  read  or  to  think,  this  re 
gion  gives  further  sign  of  itself,  as  it  were  in 
flashes  of  light,  in  sudden  discoveries  of  its  pro-, 
found  beauty  and  repose,  as  if  the  clouds  that  cov 
ered  it  parted  at  intervals  and  showed  the  ap 
proaching  traveller  the  inland  mountains,  with  the 
tranquil  eternal  meadows  spread  at  their  base, 
whereon  flocks  graze  and  shepherds  pipe  and  dance. 
But  every  insight  from  this  realm  of  thought  is 
felt  as  initial,  and  promises  a  sequel.  I  do  not 
make  it ;  I  arrive  there,  and  behold  what  was  there 
already.  I  make !  O  no  !  I  clap  my  hands  in 
infantine  joy  and  amazement  before  the  first  open 
ing  to  me  of  this  august  magnificence,  old  with  the 
love  and  homage  of  innumerable  ages,  young  with 
the  life  of  life,  the  suiibright  Mecca  of  the  desert. 
And  what  a  future  it  opens !  I  feel  a  new  heart 
beating  with  the  love  of  the  new  beauty.  I  am 
ready  to  die  out  of  nature  and  be  born  again  into 
this  new  yet  unapproachable  America  I  have  found 
in  the  West :  — 

"  Since  neither  now  nor  yesterday  began 
These  thoughts,  which  have  been  ever,  nor  yet  can 
A  man  be  found  who  their  first  entrance  knew." 

If  I  have  described  life  as  a  flux  of  moods,  I  must 
now  add  that  there  is  that  in  us  which  changes  not 


74  REALITY. 

and  which  ranks  all  sensations  and  states  of  mind. 
The  consciousness  in  each  man  is  a  sliding  scale, 
which  identifies  him  now  with  the  First  Cause,  and 
now  with  the  flesh  of  his  body ;  life  above  life,  in 
infinite  degrees.  The  sentiment  from  which  it 
sprung  determines  the  dignity  of  any  deed,  and  the 
question  ever  is,  not  what  you  have  done  or  for 
borne,  but  at  whose  command  you  have  done  or  f or° 
borne  it. 

Fortune,  Minerva,  Muse,  Holy  Ghost,  —  these 
are  quaint  names,  too  narrow  to  cover  this  un 
bounded  substance.  The  baffled  intellect  must  still 
kneel  before  this  cause,  which  refuses  to  be  named, 
—  ineffable  cause,  which  every  fine  genius  has  es 
sayed  to  represent  by  some  emphatic  symbol,  as, 
Thales  by  water,  Anaximenes  by  air,  Anaxagoras 
by  (NoGs)  thought,  Zoroaster  by  fire,  Jesus  and  the 
moderns  by  love ;  and  the  metaphor  of  each  has 
become  a  national  religion.  The  Chinese  Mencius 
has  not  been  the  least  successful  in  his  generali 
zation.  "  I  fully  understand  language,"  he  said, 
"  and  nourish  well  my  vast-flowing  vigor."  —  "I 
beg  to  ask  what  you  call  vast-flowing  vigor  ? " 
said  his  companion.  "The  explanation,"  replied 
Mencius,  "is  difficult.  This  vigor  is  supremely 
great,  and  in  the  highest  degree  unbending.  Nour 
ish  it  correctly  and  do  it  no  injury,  and  it  will  fill 
up  the  vacancy  between  heaven  and  earth.  This 


EXPERIENCE.  75 

vigor  accords  with  and  assists  justice  and  reason, 
and  leaves  no  hunger."  — In  our  more  correct  writ 
ing  we  give  to  this  generalization  the  name  of  Be» 
ing,  and  thereby  confess  that  we  have  arrived  as  far 
as  we  can  go.  Suffice  it  for  the  joy  of  the  universe 
that  we  have  not  arrived  at  a  wall,  but  at  intermi 
nable  oceans.  Our  life  seems  not  present  so  much 
as  prospective ;  not  for  the  affairs  on  which  it  is 
wasted,  but  as  a  hint  of  this  vast-flowing  vigor. 
Most  of  life  seems  to  be  mere  advertisement  of  fac 
ulty  ;  information  is  given  us  not  to  sell  ourselves 
cheap  ;  that  we  are  very  great.  So,  in  particulars, 
our  greatness  is  always  in  a  tendency  or  direction, 
not  in  an  action.  It  is  for  us  to  believe  in  the  rule, 
not  in  the  exception.  The  noble  are  thus  known 
from  the  ignoble.  So  in  accepting  the  leading  of 
the  sentiments,  it  is  not  what  we  believe  concerning 
the  immortality  of  the  soul  or  the  like,  but  the  uni 
versal  impulse  to  believe,  that  is  the  material  cm 
cumstance  and  is  the  principal  fact  in  the  history 
of  the  globe.  Shall  we  describe  this  cause  as  that 
which  works  directly  ?  The  spirit  is  not  helpless 
or  needful  of  mediate  organs.  It  has  plentiful 
powers  and  direct  effects.  I  am  explained  without 
explaining,  I  am  felt  without  acting,  and  where  I 
am  not.  Therefore  all  just  persons  are  satisfied 
with  their  own  praise.  They  refuse  to  explain 
themselves,  and  are  content  that  new  actions  should 


76  REALITY. 

do  them  that  office.  They  believe  that  we  com« 
municate  without  speech  and  above  speech,  and 
that  no  right  action  of  ours  is  quite  imaffecting  to 
our  friends,  at  whatever  distance  ;  for  the  influence 
of  action  is  not  to  be  measured  by  miles.  Why 
should  I  fret  myself  because  a  circumstance  has 
occurred  which  hinders  my  presence  where  I  was 
expected  ?  If  I  am  not  at  the  meeting,  my  pres 
ence  where  I  am  should  be  as  useful  to  the  com 
monwealth  of  friendship  and  wisdom,  as  would  be 
my  presence  in  that  place.  I  exert  the  same  qual 
ity  of  power  in  all  places.  Thus  journeys  the 
mighty  Ideal  before  us  ;  it  never  was  known  to  fall 
into  the  rear.  No  man  ever  came  to  an  experience 
which  was  satiating,  but  his  good  is  tidings  of  a 
better.  Onward  and  onward  !  In  liberated  mo 
ments  we  know  that  a  new  picture  of  life  and  duty 
is  already  possible  ;  the  elements  already  exist  in 
many  minds  around  you  of  a  doctrine  of  life  which 
shall  transcend  any  written  record  wre  have.  The 
new  statement  will  comprise  the  skepticisms  as  well 
as  the  faiths  of  society,  and  out  of  unbeliefs  a  creed 
shall  be  formed.  For  skepticisms  are  not  gratui 
tous  or  lawless,  but  are  limitations  of  the  affirma 
tive  statement,  and  the  new  philosophy  must  take 
them  in  and  make  affirmations  outside  of  them, 
just  as  much  as  it  must  include  the  oldest  beliefs. 
It  is  very  unhappy,  but  too  late  to  be  helped,  the 


EXPERIENCE.  77 

discovery  we  have  made  that  we  exist.  That  dis 
covery  is  called  the  Fall  of  Man.  Ever  afterwards 
we  suspect  our  instruments.  We  have  learned  that 
we  do  not  see  directly,  but  mediately,  and  that  we 
have  no  means  of  correcting  these  colored  and  dis 
torting  lenses  which  we  are,  or  of  computing  the 
amount  of  their  errors.  Perhaps  these  subject- 
lenses  have  a  creative  power ;  perhaps  there  are  no 
objects.  Once  we  lived  in  what  we  saw  ;  now,  the 
rapaciousness  of  this  new  power,  which  threatens 
to  absorb  all  things,  engages  us.  Nature,  art,  per 
sons,  letters,  religions,  objects,  successively  tumble 
in,  and  God  is  but  one  of  its  ideas.  Nature  and 
literature  are  subjective  phenomena ;  every  evil  and 
every  good  thing  is  a  shadow  which  we  cast.  The 
street  is  full  of  humiliations  to  the  proud.  As  the 
fop  contrived  to  dress  his  bailiffs  in  his  livery  and 
make  them  wait  on  his  guests  at  table,  so  the  cha 
grins  which  the  bad  heart  gives  off  as  bubbles,  at 
once  take  form  as  ladies  and  gentlemen  in  the 
street,  shopmen  or  bar-keepers  in  hotels,  and 
threaten  or  insult  whatever  is  threatenable  and 
Unsuitable  in  us.  'T  is  the  same  with  our  idolatries. 
People  forget  that  it  is  the  eye  which  makes  the 
horizon,  and  the  rounding  mind's  eye  which  makes 
this  or  that  man  a  type  or  representative  of  human 
ity,  with  the  name  of  hero  or  saint.  Jesus,  the 
u  providential  man,"  is  a  good  man  on  whom  many 


78  SUBJECT  OR  THE  ONE. 

people  are  agreed  that  these  optical  laws  shall  take 
effect.  By  love  on  one  part  and  by  forbearance  to 
press  objection  on  the  other  part,  it  is  for  a  time 
settled  that  we  will  look  at  him  in  the  centre  of  the 
horizon,  and  ascribe  to  him  the  properties  that  will 
attach  to  any  man  so  seen.  But  the  longest  love> 
or  aversion  has  a  speedy  term.  The  great  and 
crescive  self,  rooted  in  absolute  nature,  supplants 
all  relative  existence  and  ruins  the  kingdom  of 
mortal  friendship  and  love.  Marriage  (in  what  is 
called  the  spiritual  world)  is  impossible,  because  of 
the  inequality  between  every  subject  and  every  ob 
ject.  The  subject  is  the  receiver  of  Godhead,  and 
at  every  comparison  must  feel  his  being  enhanced 
by  that  cryptic  might.  Though  not  in  energy,  yet 
by  presence,  this  magazine  of  substance  cannot  be 
otherwise  than  felt ;  nor  can  any  force  of  intellect 
attribute  to  the  object  the  proper  deity  which  sleeps 
or  wakes  forever  in  every  subject.  Never  can  love 
make  consciousness  and  ascription  equal  in  force. 
There  will  be  the  same  gulf  between  every  me 
and  thee  as  between  the  original  and  the  picture. 
The  universe  is  the  bride  of  the  soul.  All  pri 
vate  sympathy  is  partial.  Two  human  beings  are 
like  globes,  which  can  touch  only  in  a  point,  and 
whilst  they  remain  in  contact  all  other  points  of 
each  of  the  spheres  are  inert;  their  turn  must 
also  come,  and  the  longer  a  particular  union  lasts 


EXPERIENCE.  79 

the  more  energy  of  appetency  the  parts  not  in  union 
acquire. 

Life  will  be  imaged,  but  cannot  be  divided  nor 
doubled.  Any  invasion  of  its  unity  would  be 
chaos.  The  soul  is  not  twin-born  but  the  only 
begotten,  and  though  revealing  itself  as  child  in 
time,  child  in  appearance,  is  of  a  fatal  and  univer 
sal  power,  admitting  no  co-life.  Every  day,  every 
act  betrays  the  ill-concealed  deity.  We  believe  in 
ourselves  as  we  do  not  believe  in  others.  We  per 
mit  all  things  to  ourselves,  and  that  which  we  call 
sin  in  others  is  experiment  for  us.  It  is  an  in 
stance  of  cur  faith  in  ourselves  that  men  never 
speak  of  crime  as  lightly  as  they  think  ;  or  every 
man  thinks  a  latitude  safe  for  himself  which  is  no 
wise  to  be  indulged  to  another.  The  act  looks  very 
differently  on  the  inside  and  on  the  outside  ;  in  its 
quality  and  in  its  consequences.  Murder  in  the 
murderer  is  no  such  ruinous  thought  as  poets  and 
romancers  will  have  it ;  it  does  not  unsettle  him  or 
fright  him  from  his  ordinary  notice  of  trifles  ;  it  is 
an  act  quite  easy  to  be  contemplated ;  but  in  its 
sequel  it  turns  out  to  be  a  horrible  jangle  and  con 
founding  of  all  relations.  Especially  the  crimes 
that  spring  from  love  seem  right  and  fair  from 
the  actor's  point  of  view,  but  when  acted  are  found 
destructive  of  society.  No  man  at  last  believes 
that  he  can  be  lost,  or  that  the  crime  in  him  is  as 


80  SUBJECT  OR  THE  ONE. 

black  as  in  the  felon.  Because  the  intellect  qual 
ifies  in  our  own  case  the  moral  judgments.  For 
there  is  no  crime  to  the  intellect.  That  is  antino- 
mian  or  hypernomian,  and  judges  law  as  well  as 
fact.  u  It  is  worse  than  a  crime,  it  is  a  blunder," 
said  Napoleon,  speaking  the  language  of  the  intel 
lect.  To  it,  the  world  is  a  problem  in  mathematics 
or  the  science  of  quantity,  and  it  leaves  out  praise 
and  blame  and  all  weak  emotions.  All  stealing  is 
comparative.  If  you  come  to  absolutes,  pray  who 
does  not  steal  ?  Saints  are  sad,  because  they  behold 
sin  (even  when  they  speculate),  from  the  point  of 
view  of  the  conscience,  and  not  of  the  intellect ;  a 
confusion  of  thought.  Sin,  seen  from  the  thought, 
is  a  diminution,  or  less  ;  seen  from  the  conscience 
or  will,  it  is  pravity  or  bad.  The  intellect  names 
it  shade,  absence  of  light,  and  no  essence.  The 
conscience  must  feel  it  as  essence,  essential  evil. 
This  it  is  not ;  it  has  an  objective  existence,  but  no 
subjective. 

Thus  inevitably  does  the  universe  wear  our  color, 
and  every  object  fall  successively  into  the  subject 
Itself.  The  subject  exists,  the  subject  enlarges ;  all 
things  sooner  or  later  fall  into  place.  As  I  am,  so 
I  see ;  use  what  language  we  will,  we  can  never  say 
anything  but  what  we  are ;  Hermes,  Cadmus,  Co 
lumbus,  Newton,  Bonaparte,  are  the  mind's  minis 
ters.  Instead  of  feeling  a  poverty  when  we  encoun- 


EXPERIENCE.  81 

fcer  a  great  man,  let  us  treat  the  new  comer  like  a 
travelling  geologist  who  passes  through  our  estate 
and  shows  us  good  slate,  or  limestone,  or  anthracite, 
in  our  brush  pasture.  The  partial  action  of  each 
strong  mind  in  one  direction  is  a  telescope  for  the 
objects  on  which  it  is  pointed.  But  every  other 
part  of  knowledge  is  to  be  pushed  to  the  same  ex 
travagance,  ere  the  soul  attains  her  due  sphericity, 
I>o  you  see  that  kitten  chasing  so  prettily  her  own 
tail?  If  you  could  look  with  her  eyes  you  might 
see  her  surrounded  with  hundreds  of  figures  per 
forming  complex  dramas,  with  tragic  and  comic  is 
sues,  long  conversations,  many  characters,  many  ups 
and  downs  of  fate,  —  and  meantime  it  is  only  puss 
and  her  tail.  How  long  before  our  masquerade  will 
end  its  noise  of  tambourines,  laughter,  and  shout 
ing,  and  we  shall  find  it  was  a  solitary  performance  ? 
A  subject  and  an  object,  —  it  takes  so  much  to 
make  the  galvanic  circuit  complete,  but  magnitude 
adds  nothing.  What  imports  it  whether  it  is  Kep 
ler  and  the  sphere,  Columbus  and  America,  a  reader 
and  his  book,  or  puss  with  her  tail  ? 

It  is  true  that  all  the  muses  and  love  and  religion 
hate  these  developments,  and  will  find  a  way  to 
punish  the  chemist  who  publishes  in  the  parlor  the 
secrets  of  the  laboratory.  And  we  cannot  say  too 
little  of  our  constitutional  necessity  of  seeing  things 
under  private  aspects,  or  saturated  with  our  humors. 

VOL..    III.  6 


82  SUBJECT  OR  THE  ONE. 

And  yet  is  the  God  the  native  of  these  bleak  rocks. 
That  need  makes  in  morals  the  capital  virtue  of 
self -trust.  We  must  hold  hard  to  this  poverty,  how 
ever  scandalous,  and  by  more  vigorous  self-recover 
ies,  after  the  sallies  of  action,  possess  our  axis  more 
firmly.  The  life  of  truth  is  cold  and  so  far  mourn 
ful  ;  but  it  is  not  the  slave  of  tears,  contritions  and 
perturbations.  It  does  not  attempt  another's  work, 
nor  adopt  another's  facts.  It  is  a  main  lesson  of 
wisdom  to  know  your  own  from  another's.  I  have 
learned  that  I  cannot  dispose  of  other  people's 
facts  ;  but  I  possess  such  a  key  to  my  own  as  per 
suades  me,  against  all  their  denials,  that  they  also 
have  a  key  to  theirs.  A  sympathetic  person  is 
placed  in  the  dilemma  of  a  swimmer  among  drown 
ing  men,  who  all  catch  at  him,  and  if  he  give  so 
much  as  a  leg  or  a  finger  they  will  drown  him. 
They  wish  to  be  saved  from  the  mischiefs  of  their 
vices,  but  not  from  their  vices.  Charity  would  be 
wasted  on  this  poor  waiting  on  the  symptoms.  A 
wise  and  hardy  physician  will  say,  Come  out  of 
that,  as  the  first  condition  of  advice. 

In  this  our  talking  America  we  are  ruined  by  our 
good  nature  and  listening  on  all  sides.  This  com 
pliance  takes  away  the  power  of  being  greatly  use 
ful.  A  man  should  not  be  able  to  look  other  than 
directly  and  forthright.  A  preoccupied  attention 
is  the  only  answer  to  the  importunate  frivolity  of 


EXPERIENCE  83 

other  people;  an  attention,  and  to  an  aim  which 
makes  their  wants  frivolous.  This  is  a  divine  an 
swer,  and  leaves  no  appeal  and  no  hard  thoughts. 
In  Flaxman's  drawing  of  the  Eumenides  of  ^Eschy- 
lus,  Orestes  supplicates  Apollo,  whilst  the  Furies 
sleep  on  the  threshold.  The  face  of  the  god  ex 
presses  a  shade  of  regret  and  compassion,  but  is  calm 
with  the  conviction  of  the  irreconcilableness  of  the 
two  spheres.  He  is  born  into  other  politics,  into 
the  eternal  and  beautiful.  The  man  at  his  feet  asks 
for  his  interest  in  turmoils  of  the  earth,  into  which 
his  nature  cannot  enter.  And  the  Eumenides  there 
lying  express  pictorially  this  disparity.  The  god  is 
surcharged  with  his  divine  destiny. 

Illusion,  Temperament,  Succession,  Surface,  Sur 
prise,  Reality,  Subjectiveness,  —  these  are  threads 
on  the  loom  of  time,  these  are  the  lords  of  life.  I 
dare  not  assume  to  give  their  order,  but  I  namo 
them  as  I  find  them  in  my  way.  I  know  better  than 
to  claim  any  completeness  for  my  picture.  I  am  a 
fragment,  and  this  is  a  fragment  of  me.  I  can  very 
confidently  announce  one  or  another  law,  which 
throws  itself  into  relief  and  form,  but  I  am  too 
young  yet  by  some  ages  to  compile  a  code.  I  gos 
sip  for  my  hour  concerning  the  eternal  politics. 
I  have  seen  many  fair  pictures  not  in  vain.  A  won 
derful  time  I  have  lived  in.  I  am  not  the  novice  I 


84  EXPERIENCE. 

was  fourteen,  nor  yet  seven  years  ago.  Let  who 
will  ask  Where  is  the  fruit  ?  I  find  a  private  fruit 
sufficient.  This  is  a  fruit,  —  that  I  should  not  ask 
for  a  rash  effect  from  meditations,  counsels  and  the 
hiving  of  truths.  I  should  feel  it  pitiful  to  demand 
a  result  on  this  town  and  county,  an  overt  effect 
on  the  instant  month  and  year.  The  effect  is  deep 
and  secular  as  the  cause.  It  works  on  periods  in 
which  mortal  lifetime  is  lost.  All  I  know  is  recep 
tion  ;  I  am  and  I  have  :  but  I  do  not  get,  and  when 
I  have  fancied  I  had  gotten  anything,  I  found  I  did 
riot.  I  worship  with  wonder  the  great  Fortune. 
My  reception  has  been  so  large,  that  I  am  not  an 
noyed  by  receiving  this  or  that  superabundantly. 
I  say  to  the  Genius,  if  he  will  pardon  the  proverb, 
In  for  a  mill,  in  for  a  million.  When  I  receive  a 
new  gift,  I  do  not  macerate  my  body  to  make  the 
account  square,  for  if  I  should  die  I  could  not  make 
the  account  square.  The  benefit  overran  the  merit 
the  first  day,  and  has  overrun  the  merit  ever  since. 
The  merit  itself,  so-called,  I  reckon  part  of  the  re 
ceiving. 

Also  that  hankering  after  an  overt  or  practical 
effect  seems  to  me  an  apostasy.  In  good  earnest 
I  am  willing  to  spare  this  most  unnecessary  deal  of 
doing.  Life  wears  to  me  a  visionary  face.  Hard 
est  roughest  action  is  visionary  also.  It  is  but  a 
choice  between  soft  and  turbulent  dreams.  People 


EXPERIENCE.  85 

disparage  knowing  and  the  intellectual  life,  and 
urge  doing.  I  am  very  content  with  knowing,  if 
only  I  could  know.  That  is  an  august  entertain 
ment,  and  would  suffice  me  a  great  while.  To 
know  a  little  would  be  worth  the  expense  of  this 
world.  I  hear  always  the  law  of  Adrastia,  "  that 
every  soul  which  had  acquired  any  truth,  should  be 
safe  from  harm  "until  another  period." 

I  know  that  the  world  I  converse  with  in  the  city 
and  in  the  farms,  is  not  the  world  I  think.  I  ob 
serve  that  difference,  and  shall  observe  it.  One 
day  I  shall  know  the  value  and  law  of  this  dis 
crepance.  But  I  have  not  found  that  much  was 
gained  by  manipular  attempts  to  realize  the  world 
of  thought.  Many  eager  persons  successively  make 
an  experiment  in  this  way,  and  make  themselves 
ridiculous.  They  acquire  democratic  manners,  they 
foam  at  the  mouth,  they  hate  and  deny.  Worse, 
I  observe  that  in  the  history  of  mankind  there  is 
never  a  solitary  example  of  success,  —  taking 
their  own  tests  of  success.  I  say  this  polemically, 
or  in  reply  to  the  inquiry,  Why  not  realize  your 
world  ?  But  far  be  from  me  the  despair  which 
prejudges  the  law  by  a  paltry  empiricism  ; —  since 
there  never  was  a  right  endeavor  but  it  succeeded. 
Patience  and  patience,  we  shall  win  at  the  last. 
We  must  be  very  suspicious  of  the  deceptions 
of  the  element  of  time.  It  takes  a  good  deal  of 


86  EXPERIENCE. 

time  to  eat  or  to  sleep,  or  to  earn  a  hundred  dol 
lars,  and  a  very  little  time  to  entertain  a  hope  and 
an  insight  which  becomes  the  light  of  our  life.  We 
dress  our  garden,  eat  our  dinners,  discuss  the  house 
hold  with  our  wives,  and  these  things  make  no  im 
pression,  are  forgotten  next  week  ;  but,  in  the  soli- 
tude  to  which  every  man  is  always  returning,  he 
has  a  sanity  and  revelations  which  in  his  passage 
into  new  worlds  he  will  carry  with  him.  Never 
mind  the  ridicule,  never  mind  the  defeat ;  up  again, 
old  heart !  —  it  seems  to  say,  —  there  is  victory  yet 
for  all  justice ;  and  the  true  romance  which  the 
world  exists  to  realize  will  be  the  transformation  of 
genius  into  practical  power. 


CHARACTER. 


The  sun  set ;  but  set  not  his  hope : 
Stars  rose  ;  his  faith  was  earlier  up- 
Fixed  on  the  enormous  galaxy, 
Deeper  and  older  seemed  his  eye : 
And  matched  his  sufferance  sublime 
The  taciturnity  of  time. 
He  spoke,  and  words  more  soft  than  rain 
Brought  the  Age  of  Gold  again : 
His  action  won  such  reverence  sweet, 
As  hid  all  measure  of  the  feat. 


Work  of  his  hand 
He  nor  commends  nor  grieves 
Pleads  for  itself  the  fact ; 
As  unrepenting  Nature  leaves 
.Her  every  act. 


III. 

CHAKACTER. 


I  HAVE  read  that  those  who  listened  to  Lord 
Chatham  felt  that  there  was  something  finer  in  the 
man  than  any  thing  which  he  said.  It  has  been 
complained  of  our  brilliant  English  historian  of  the 
French  Revolution  that  when  he  has  told  all  his 
facts  about  Mirabeau,  they  do  not  justify  his  esti 
mate  of  his  genius.  The  Gracchi,  Agis,  Cle- 
ornenes,  and  others  of  Plutarch's  heroes,  do  not 
in  the  record  of  facts  equal  their  own  fame.  Sir 
Philip  Sidney,  the  Earl  of  Essex,  Sir  Walter  Ra 
leigh,  are  men  of  great  figure  and  of  few  deeds. 
We  cannot  find  the  smallest  part  of  the  personal 
weight  of  Washington  in  the  narrative  of  his  ex 
ploits.  The  authority  of  the  name  of  Schiller  is 
too  great  for  his  books.  This  inequality  of  the 
reputation  to  the  works  or  the  anecdotes  is  not 
accounted  for  by  saying  that  the  reverberation 
is  longer  than  the  thunder-clap,  but  somewhat  re 
sided  in  these  men  which  begot  an  expectation  that 
outran  all  their  performance.  The  largest  part  of 


90  CHARACTER. 

their  power  was  latent.  This  is  that  which  we  call 
Character,  —  a  reserved  force,  which  acts  directly 
by  presence  and  without  means.  It  is  conceived 
of  as  a  certain  undemonstrable  force,  a  Familiar  or 
Genius,  by  whose  impulses  the  man  is  guided  but 
whose  counsels  he  cannot  impart ;  which  is  com 
pany  for  him,  so  that  such  men  are  often  solitary, 
or  if  they  chance  to  be  social,  do  not  need  society 
but  can  entertain  themselves  very  well  alone.  The 
purest  literary  talent  appears  at  one  time  great,  at 
another  time  small,  but  character  is  of  a  stellar  and 
undiminishable  greatness.  What  others  effect  by 
talent  or  by  eloquence,  this  man  accomplishes  by 
some  magnetism.  "  Half  his  strength  he  put  not 
forth."  His  victories  are  by  demonstration  of  su 
periority,  and  not  by  crossing  of  bayonets.  He 
conquers  because  his  arrival  alters  the  face  of  af 
fairs.  "  O  lole  !  how  did  you  know  that  Hercules 
was  a  god  ?  "  "  Because,"  answered  lole,  "  I  was 
content  the  moment  my  eyes  fell  on  him.  When 
I  beheld  Theseus,  I  desired  that  I  might  see  him 
offer  battle,  or  at  least  guide  his  horses  in  the  char 
iot-race  ;  but  Hercules  did  not  wait  for  a  contest ; 
he  conquered  whether  he  stood,  or  walked,  or  sat,  or 
whatever  thing  he  did."  Man,  ordinarily  a  pen 
dant  to  events,  only  half  attached,  and  that  awk 
wardly,  to  the  world  he  lives  in,  in  these  examples 
appears  to  share  the  life  of  things,  and  to  be  an  ex- 


CHARACTER.  91 

pression  of  the  same  laws  which  control  the  tides 
and  the  sun,  numbers  and  quantities. 

But  to  use  a  more  modest  illustration  and  nearer 
home,  I  observe  that  in  our  political  elections, 
where  this  element,  if  it  appears  at  all,  can  only 
occur  in  its  coarsest  form,  we  sufficiently  under 
stand  its  incomparable  rate.  The  people  know 
that  they  need  in  their  representative  much  more 
than  talent,  namely  the  power  to  make  his  talent 
trusted.  They  cannot  come  at  their  ends  by  send 
ing  to  Congress  a  learned,  acute,  and  fluent  speaker, 
if  he  be  not  one  who,  before  he  was  appointed  by 
the  people  to  represent  them,  was  appointed  by 
Almighty  God  to  stand  for  a  fact,  —  invincibly 
persuaded  of  that  fact  in  himself,  —  so  that  the 
most  confident  and  the  most  violent  persons  learn 
that  here  is  resistance  on  which  both  impudence 
and  terror  are  wasted,  namely  faith  in  a  fact.  The 
men  who  carry  their  points  do  not  need  to  inquire 
of  their  constituents  what  they  should  say,  but  are 
themselves  the  country  which  they  represent ;  no 
where  are  its  emotions  or  opinions  so  instant  and 
true  as  in  them ;  nowhere  so  pure  from  a  selfish 
infusion.  The  constituency  at  home  hearkens  to 
their  words,  watches  the  color  of  their  cheek,  and 
therein,  as  in  a  glass,  dresses  its  own.  Our  public 
assemblies  are  pretty  good  tests  of  manly  force. 
Our  frank  countrymen  of  the  west  and  south  have 


92  CIIARA  CTER. 

a  taste  for  character,  and  like  to  know  whether  the 
New  Englander  is  a  substantial  man,  or  whether 
the  hand  can  pass  through  him. 

The  same  motive  force  appears  in  trade.  There 
are  geniuses  in  trade,  as  well  as  in  war,  or  the 
State,  or  letters  ;  and  the  reason  why  this  or  that 
man  is  fortunate  is  not  to  be  told.  It  lies  in  the 
man;  that  is  all  anybody  can  tell  you  about  it. 
See  him  and  you  will  know  as  easily  why  he  suc 
ceeds,  as,  if  you  see  Napoleon,  you  would  compre 
hend  his  fortune.  In  the  new  objects  we  recognize 
the  old  game,  the  habit  of  fronting  the  fact,  and  not 
dealing  with  it  at  second  hand,  through  the  percep 
tions  of  somebody  else.  Nature  seems  to  authorize 
trade,  as  soon  as  you  see  the  natural  merchant,  who 
appears  not  so  much  a  private  agent  as  her  factor 
and  Minister  of  Commerce.  His  natural  probity 
combines  with  his  insight  into  the  fabric  of  society 
to  put  him  above  tricks,  and  he  communicates  to 
all  his  own  faith  that  contracts  are  of  no  private 
interpretation.  The  habit  of  his  mind  is  a  refer 
ence  to  standards  of  natural  equity  and  public  ad 
vantage  ;  and  he  inspires  respect  and  the  wish  to 
deal  with  him,  both  for  the  quiet  spirit  of  honor 
which  attends  him,  and  for  the  intellectual  pastime 
which  the  spectacle  of  so  much  ability  affords. 
This  immensely  stretched  trade,  which  makes  the 
capes  of  the  Southern  Ocean  his  wharves  and  the 


CHARACTER.  93 

Atlantic  Sea  his  familiar  port,  centres  in  his  brain 
only  ;  and  nobody  in  the  universe  can  make  his 
place  good.  In  his  parlor  I  see  very  well  that  he 
has  been  at  hard  work  this  morning,  with  that 
knitted  brow  and  that  settled  humor,  which  all  his 
desire  to  be  courteous  cannot  shake  off.  I  see 
plainly  how  many  firm  acts  have  been  done ;  how 
many  valiant  noes  have  this  day  been  spoken, 
when  others  would  have  uttered  ruinous  yeas.  I 
see,  with  the  pride  of  art  and  skill  of  masterly 
arithmetic  and  power  of  remote  combination,  the 
consciousness  of  being  an  agent  and  playfellow  of 
the  original  laws  of  the  world.  He  too  believes 
that  none  can  supply  him,  and  that  a  man  must  be 
born  to  trade  or  he  cannot  learn  it. 

This  virtue  draws  the  mind  more  when  it  ap 
pears  in  action  to  ends  not  so  mixed.  It  works 
with  most  energy  in  the  smallest  companies  and  in 
private  relations.  In  all  cases  it  is  an  extraordi 
nary  and  incomputable  agent.  The  excess  of  phys 
ical  strength  is  paralyzed  by  it.  Higher  natures 
overpower  lower  ones  by  affecting  them  with  a  cer 
tain  sleep.  The  faculties  are  locked  up,  and  offer 
no  resistance.  Perhaps  that  is  the  universal  law. 
When  the  high  cannot  bring  up  the  low  to  itself, 
it  benumbs  it,  as  man  charms  down  the  resistance 
of  the  lower  animals.  Men  exert  on  each  other  a 
similar  occult  power.  Plow  often  has  the  influence 


94  CHARACTER 

of  a  true  master  realized  all  the  tales  of  magic !  A 
river  of  command  seemed  to  run  down  from  his 
eyes  into  all  those  who  beheld  him,  a  torrent  of 
strong  sad  light,  like  an  Ohio  or  Danube,  which 
pervaded  them  with  his  thoughts  and  colored  all 
events  with  the  hue  of  his  mind.  "  What  means 
did  you  employ  ?  "  was  the  question  asked  of  the 
wife  of  Concini,  in  regard  to  her  treatment  of  Mary 
of  Medici ;  and  the  answer  was,  "  Only  that  influ 
ence  which  every  strong  mind  has  over  a  weak 
one."  Cannot  Caesar  in  irons  shuffle  off  the  irons 
and  transfer  them  to  the  person  of  Hippo  or  Thra- 
so  the  turnkey?  Is  an  iron  handcuff  so  immu 
table  a  bond  ?  Suppose  a  slaver  on  the  coast  of 
Guinea  should  take  on  board  a  gang  of  negroes 
which  should  contain  persons  of  the  stamp  of  Tous 
saint  L'Ouverture  :  or,  let  us  fancy,  under  these 
swarthy  masks  he  has  a  gang  of  Washingtons  in 
chains.  When  they  arrive  at  Cuba,  will  the  rela 
tive  order  of  the  ship's  company  be  the  same  ?  Is 
there  nothing  but  rope  and  iron  ?  Is  there  no  love, 
no  reverence  ?  Is  there  never  a  glimpse  of  right 
in  a  poor  slave-captain's  mind ;  and  cannot  these  be 
supposed  available  to  break  or  elude  or  in  any 
manner  overmatch  the  tension  of  an  inch  or  two  of 
iron  ring  ? 

This  is  a  natural  power,  like  light  and  heat,  and 
all  nature  cooperates  with  it.     The  reason  why  we 


CHARACTER,  95 

feel  one  man's  presence  and  do  not  feel  another's 
is  as  simple  as  gravity.  Truth  is  the  summit  of 
being;  justice  is  the  application  of  it  to  affairs. 
All  individual  natures  stand  in  a  scale,  according 
to  the  purity  of  this  element  in  them.  The  will  of 
the  pure  runs  down  from  them  into  other  natures 
as  water  runs  down  from  a  higher  into  a  lower  ves-- 
sel.  This  natural  force  is  no  more  to  be  withstood 
than  any  other  natural  force.  We  can  drive  a 
stone  upward  for  a  moment  into  the  air,  but  it  is 
yet  true  that  all  stones  will  forever  fall ;  and  what 
ever  instances  can  be  quoted  of  unpunished  theft, 
or  of  a  lie  which  somebody  credited,  justice  must 
prevail,  and  it  is  the  privilege  of  truth  to  make  it 
self  believed.  Character  is  this  moral  order  seen 
through  the  medium  of  an  individual  nature.  An 
individual  is  an  encloser.  Time  and  space,  liberty 
and  necessity,  truth  and  thought,  are  left  at  large 
no  longer.  Now,  the  universe  is  a  close  or  pound. 
All  things  exist  in  the  man  tinged  with  the  man 
ners  of  his  soul.  With  what  quality  is  in  him  he 
infuses  all  nature  that  he  can  reach ;  nor  does  ho 
tend  to  lose  himself  in  vastness,  but,  at  how  long  a 
curve  soever,  all  his  regards  return  into  his  own 
good  at  last.  He  animates  all  he  can,  and  he  sees 
only  what  he  animates.  He  encloses  the  world,  a3 
the  patriot  does  his  country,  as  a  material  basis  for 
his  character,  and  a  theatre  for  action.  A  healthy 


96  CITARA  CTER. 

soul  stands  united  with  the  Just  and  the  True,  as 
the  magnet  arranges  itself  with  the  pole  ;  so  that  he 
stands  to  all  beholders  like  a  transparent  object  be 
twixt  them  and  the  sun,  and  whoso  journeys  to 
wards  the  sun,  journeys  towards  that  person.  lie 
is  thus  the  medium  of  the  highest  influence  to  all 
who  are  not  on  the  same  level.  Thus  men  of  char 
acter  are  the  conscience  of  the  society  to  which  they 
belong. 

The  natural  measure  of  this  power  is  the  resist 
ance  of  circumstances.  Impure  men  consider  life 
a>s  it  is  reflected  in  opinions,  events,  and  persons. 
They  cannot  see  the  action  until  it  is  done.  Yet 
its  moral  element  preexisted  in  the  actor,  and  its 
quality  as  right  or  wrong  it  was  easy  to  predict. 
Everything  in  nature  is  bipolar,  or  has  a  positive 
and  a  negative  pole.  There  is  a  male  and  a  female, 
a  spirit  and  a  fact,  a  north  and  a  south.  Spirit  is 
the  positive,  the  event  is  the  negative.  Will  is  the 
north,  action  the  south  pole.  Character  may  be 
ranked  as  having  its  natural  place  in  the  north.  It 
shares  the  magnetic  currents  of  the  system.  The 
feeble  souls  are  drawn  to  the  south  or  negative 
pole.  They  look  at  the  profit  or  hurt  of  the  action. 
They  never  behold  a  principle  until  it  is  lodged  in 
a  person.  They  do  not  wish  to  be  lovely,  but  to  be 
loved.  Men  of  character  like  to  hear  of  their  faults ; 
Hhe  other  class  do  not  like  to  hear  of  faults ;  they 


CHARACTER.  97 

worship  events ;  secure  to  them  a  fact,  a  connection, 
a  certain  chain  of  circumstances,  and  they  will  ask 
no  more.  The  hero  sees  that  the  event  is  ancil 
lary  ;  it  must  follow  him.  A  given  order  of  events 
has  no  power  to  secure  to  him  the  satisfaction 
which  the  imagination  attaches  to  it ;  the  soul  of 
goodness  escapes  from  any  set  of  circumstances ; 
whilst  prosperity  belongs  to  a  certain  mind,  and 
will  introduce  that  power  and  victory  which  is  its 
natural  fruit,  into  any  order  of  events.  No  change 
of  circumstances  can  repair  a  defect  of  character. 
We  boast  our  emancipation  from  many  supersti 
tions  ;  but  if  we  have  broken  any  idols  it  is  through 
a  transfer  of  the  idolatry.  What  have  I  gained, 
that  I  no  longer  immolate  a  bull  to  Jove  or  to  Nep 
tune,  or  a  mouse  to  Hecate  ;  that  I  do  not  tremble 
before  the  Eumenides,  or  the  Catholic  Purgatory,  or 
the  Calvinistic  Judgment-day,  —  if  I  quake  at  opin 
ion,  the  public  opinion  as  we  call  it ;  or  at  the  threat 
of  assault,  or  contumely,  or  bad  neighbors,  or  pov 
erty,  or  mutilation,  or  at  the  rumor  of  revolution,  or 
of  murder  ?  If  I  quake,  what  matters  it  what  I 
quake  at  ?  Our  proper  vice  takes  form  in  one  or 
another  shape,  according  to  the  sex,  age,  or  temper 
ament  of  the  person,  and,  if  we  are  capable  of  fear, 
will  readily  find  terrors.  The  covetousness  or  the 
malignity  which  saddens  me  when  I  ascribe  it  to  so 
ciety,  is  my  own.  I  am  always  environed  by  myself r 


98  CHARACTER. 

On  the  other  part,  rectitude  is  a  perpetual  victory, 
celebrated  not  by  cries  of  joy  but  by  serenity,  which 
is  joy  fixed  or  habitual.  It  is  disgraceful  to  fly 
to  events  for  confirmation  of  our  truth  and  worth. 
The  capitalist  does  not  run  every  hour  to  the  broker 
to  coin  his  advantages  into  current  money  of  the 
realm  ;  he  is  satisfied  to  read  in  the  quotations  of 
the  market  that  his  stocks  have  risen.  The  same 
transport  which  the  occurrence  of  the  best  events  in 
the  best  order  would  occasion  me,  I  must  learn  to 
taste  purer  in  the  perception  that  my  position  is 
every  hour  meliorated,  and  does  already  command 
those  events  I  desire.  That  exultation  is  only  to 
be  checked  by  the  foresight  of  an  order  of  things 
so  excellent  as  to  throw  all  our  prosperities  into 
the  deepest  shade. 

The  face  which  character  wears  to  me  is  self- 
sufficingness.  I  revere  the  person  who  is  riches  ; 
so  that  I  cannot  think  of  him  as  alone,  or  poor,  or 
exiled,  or  unhappy,  or  a  client,  but  as  perpetual  pa 
tron,  benefactor,  and  beatified  man.  Character  is 
centrality,  the  impossibility  of  being  displaced  or 
overset.  A  man  should  give  us  a  sense  of  mass. 
Society  is  frivolous,  and  shreds  its  day  into  scraps, 
its  conversation  into  ceremonies  and  escapes.  But 
if  I  go  to  see  an  ingenious  man  I  shall  think  my 
self  poorly  entertained  if  he  give  me  nimble  pieces 
of  benevolence  and  etiquette ;  rather  he  shall  stand 


CHARACTER.  99 

stoutly  in  his  place  and  let  me  apprehend  if  it  were 
only  his  resistance  ;  know  that  I  have  encountered 
a  new  and  positive  quality;  —  great  refreshment 
for  both  of  us.  It  is  much  that  he  does  not  accept 
the  conventional  opinions  and  practices.  That  non 
conformity  will  remain  a  goad  and  remembrancer, 
and  every  inquirer  will  have  to  dispose  of  him,  in 
the  first  place.  There  is  nothing  real  or  useful 
that  is  not  a  seat  of  war.  Our  houses  ring  with 
laughter  and  personal  and  critical  gossip,  but  it 
helps  little.  But  the  uncivil,  unavailable  man,  who 
is  a  problem  and  a  threat  to  society,  whom  it  can 
not  let  pass  in  silence  but  must  either  worship  or 
hate,  —  and  to  whom  all  parties  feel  related,  both 
the  leaders  of  opinion  and  the  obscure  and  eccen 
tric,  —  he  helps  ;  he  puts  America  and  Europe  in 
the  wrong,  and  destroys  the  skepticism  which  says, 
'  man  is  a  doll,  let  us  eat  and  drink,  't  is  the  best 
we  can  do,'  by  illuminating  the  untried  and  un 
known.  Acquiescence  in  the  establishment  and 
appeal  to  the  public,  indicate  infirm  faith,  heads 
which  are  not  clear,  and  which  must  see  a  house 
built,  before  they  can  comprehend  the  plan  of  it. 
The  wise  man  not  only  leaves  out  of  his  thought 
the  many,  but  leaves  out  the  few.  Fountains,  the 
self-moved,  the  absorbed,  the  commander  because 
he  is  commanded,  the  assured,  the  primary,  —  they 
are  good  ;  for  these  announce  the  instant  presence 
of  supreme  power. 


100  CHARACTER. 

Our  action  should  rest  mathematically  on  our 
substance.  In  nature  there  are  no  false  valuations. 
A  pound  of  water  in  the  ocean  -  tempest  has  no 
more  gravity  than  in  a  midsummer  pond.  All 
things  work  exactly  according  to  their  quality  and 
according  to  their  quantity  ;  attempt  nothing  they 
cannot  do,  except  man  only.  He  has  pretension  ; 
he  wishes  and  attempts  things  beyond  his  force.  I 
read  in  a  book  of  English  memoirs,  "  Mr.  Fox 
(afterwards  Lord  Holland)  said,  he  must  have  the 
Treasury ;  he  had  served  up  to  it,  and  would  have 
it."  Xenophon  and  his  Ten  Thousand  were  quite 
equal  to  what  they  attempted,  and  did  it ;  so  equal, 
that  it  was  not  suspected  to  be  a  grand  and  inimita 
ble  exploit.  Yet  there  stands  that  fact  unrepeated, 
a  high-water  mark  in  military  history.  Many  have 
attempted  it  since,  and  not  been  equal  to  it.  It  is 
only  on  reality  that  any  power  of  action  can  be 
based.  No  institution  will  be  better  than  the  insti- 
tutor.  I  knew  an  amiable  and  accomplished  person 
who  undertook  a  practical  reform,  yet  I  was  never 
able  to  find  in  him  the  enterprise  of  love  he  took  in 
hand.  He  adopted  it  by  ear  and  by  the  under 
standing  from  the  books  he  had  been  reading.  All 
his  action  was  tentative,  a  piece  of  the  city  carried 
out  into  the  fields,  and  was  the  city  still,  and  no 
new  fact,  and  could  not  inspire  enthusiasm.  Had 
there  been  something  latent  in  the  man,  a  terrible 


CHARACTER.  101 

undemonstrated  genius  agitating  and  embarrassing 
his  demeanor,  we  had  wa.tched  for  its  advent.  It 
is  not  enough  that  the  intellect  should  see  the  evils 
and  their  remedy.  We  shall  still  postpone  our  ex 
istence,  nor  take  the  ground  to  which  we  are  en 
titled,  whilst  it  is  only  a  thought  and  not  a  spirit 
that  incites  us.  We  have  not  yet  served  up  to  it. 

These  are  properties  of  life,  and  another  trait  is 
the  notice  of  incessant  growth.  Men  should  bo  in 
telligent  and  earnest.  They  must  also  make  us  feel 
that  they  have  a  controlling  happy  future  opening 
before  them,  whose  early  twilights  already  kindle 
in  the  passing  hour.  The  hero  is  misconceived  and 
misreported  ;  he  cannot  therefore  wait  to  unravel 
any  man's  blunders ;  he  is  again  on  his  road,  add 
ing  new  powers  and  honors  to  his  domain  and  new 
claims  on  your  heart,  which  will  bankrupt  you  if 
you  have  loitered  about  the  old  things  and  have  not 
kept  your  relation  to  him  by  adding  to  your  wealth. 
New  actions  are  the  only  apologies  and  explana 
tions  of  old  ones  which  the  noble  can  bear  to  offer 
or  to  receive.  If  your  friend  has  displeased  you, 
you  shall  not  sit  down  to  consider  it,  for  he  has 
already  lost  all  memory  of  the  passage,  and  has 
doubled  his  power  to  serve  you,  and  ere  you  can 
rise  up  again  will  burden  you  with  blessings. 

We  have  no  pleasure  in  thinking  of  a  benevo 
lence  that  is  only  measured  by  its  works.  Love  is 


102  CHARACTER. 

inexhaustible,  and  if  its  estate  is  wasted,  its  gran« 
ary  emptied,  still  cheers  and  enriches,  and  the  man, 
though  he  sleep,  seems  to  purify  the  air  and  his 
house  to  adorn  the  landscape  and  strengthen  the 
laws.  People  always  recognize  this  difference.  We 
know  who  is  benevolent,  by  quite  other  means  than 
the  amount  of  subscription  to  soup-societies.  It  is 
only  low  merits  that  can  be  enumerated.  Fear, 
when  your  friends  say  to  you  what  you  have  done 
well,  and  say  it  through  ;  but  when  they  stand  with 
uncertain  timid  looks  of  respect  and  half-dislike, 
and  must  suspend  their  judgment  for  years  to  come, 
you  may  begin  to  hope.  Those  who  live  to  the  fu 
ture  must  always  appear  selfish  to  those  who  live  to 
the  present.  Therefore  it  was  droll  in  the  good 
Riemer,  who  has  written  memoirs  of  Goethe,  to 
make  out  a  list  of  his  donations  and  good  deeds,  as, 
so  many  hundred  thalers  given  to  Stilling,  to  Hegel, 
to  Tischbein ;  a  lucrative  place  found  for  Professor 
Voss,  a  post  under  the  Grand  Duke  for  Herder, 
a  pension  for  Meyer,  two  professors  recommended 
to  foreign  universities  ;  &c.,  &c.  The  longest  list 
of  specifications  of  benefit  would  look  very  short. 
A.  man  is  a  poor  creature  if  he  is  to  be  measured 
so.  For  all  these  of  course  are  exceptions,  and  the 
rule  and  hodiernal  life  of  a  good  man  is  benefac 
tion.  The  true  charity  of  Goethe  is  to  be  inferred 
from  the  account  he  gave  Dr.  Eckermann  of  thq 


CHARACTER.  103 

in  which  he  had  spent  his  fortune.  "  Each 
bon-mot  of  mine  has  cost  a  purse  of  gold.  Half  a 
million  of  my  own  money,  the  fortune  I  inherited, 
my  salary  and  the  large  income  derived  from  my 
writings  for  fifty  years  back,  have  been  expended 
to  instruct  me  in  what  I  now  know.  I  have  besides 
seen,"  &c. 

I  own  it  is  but  poor  chat  and  gossip  to  go  to 
enumerate  traits  of  this  simple  and  rapid  power, 
and  we  are  painting  the  lightning  with  charcoal ; 
but  in  these  long  nights  and  vacations  I  like  to 
console  myself  so.  Nothing  but  itself  can  copy  it. 
A  word  warm  from  the  heart  enriches  me.  I  sur 
render  at  discretion.  How  death-cold  is  literary 
genius  before  this  fire  of  life !  These  are  the 
touches  that  reanimate  my  heavy  soul  and  give  it 
eyes  to  pierce  the  dark  of  nature.  I  find,  where 
I  thought  myself  poor,  there  was  I  most  rich. 
Thence  comes  a  new  intellectual  exaltation,  to  be 
again  rebuked  by  some  new  exhibition  of  charac 
ter.  Strange  alternation  of  attraction  and  repul 
sion!  Character  repudiates  intellect,  yet  excites 
it ;  and  character  passes  into  thought,  is  published 
so,  and  then  is  ashamed  before  new  flashes  of  moral 
worth. 

Character  is  nature  in  the  highest  form.  It  is 
of  no  use  to  ape  it  or  to  contend  with  it.  Some 
what  is  possible  of  resistance,  and  of  persistence, 


104  CHARACTER. 

and  of  creation,  to  this  power,  which  will  foil  all 
emulation. 

This  masterpiece  is  best  where  no  hands  but  na 
ture's  have  been  laid  on  it.  Care  is  taken  that  the 
greatly-destined  shall  slip  up  into  life  in  the  shade, 
with  no  thousand-eyed  Athens  to  watch  and  blazon 
every  new  thought,  every  blushing  emotion  of  young 
genius.  Two  persons  lately,  very  young  children 
of  the  most  high  God,  have  given  me  occasion  for 
thought.  When  I  explored  the  source  of  their 
sanctity  and  charm  for  the  imagination,  it  seemed 
as  if  each  answered,  i  From  my  nonconformity ;  I 
never  listened  to  your  people's  law,  or  to  what  they 
call  their  gospel,  and  wasted  my  time.  I  was  con 
tent  with  the  simple  rural  poverty  of  my  own; 
hence  this  sweetness ;  my  work  never  reminds  you 
of  that ;  —  is  pure  of  that.'  And  nature  advertises 
me  in  such  persons  that  in  democratic  America  she 
will  not  be  democratized.  How  cloistered  and  con 
stitutionally  sequestered  from  the  market  and  from 
scandal !  It  was  only  this  morning  that  I  sent 
away  some  wild  flowers  of  these  wood-gods.  They 
are  a  relief  from  literature,  —  these  fresh  draughts 
from  the  sources  of  thought  and  sentiment ;  as  we 
read,  in  an  age  of  polish  and  criticism,  the  first 
lines  of  written  prose  and  verse  of  a  nation.  How 
captivating  is  their  devotion  to  their  favorite  books, 
whether  ^Eschylus,  Dante,  Shakspeare,  or  Scott, 


CHARACTER.  105 

as  feeling  that  they  have  a  stake  in  that  book ; 
who  touches  that,  touches  them  ;  —  and  especially 
the  total  solitude  of  the  critic,  the  Patmos  of 
thought  from  which  he  writes,  in  unconsciousness 
of  any  eyes  that  shall  ever  read  this  writings 
Could  they  dream  on  still,  as  angels,  and  not  wake 
to  comparisons  and  to  be  flattered !  Yet  some 
natures  are  too  good  to  be  spoiled  by  praise,  and 
wherever  the  vein  of  thought  reaches  down  into 
the  profound,  there  is  no  danger  from  vanity.  Sol 
emn  friends  will  warn  them  of  the  danger  of  the 
head's  being  turned  by  the  flourish  of  trumpets, 
but  they  can  afford  to  smile.  I  remember  the  in 
dignation  of  an  eloquent  Methodist  at  the  kind  ad 
monitions  of  a  Doctor  of  Divinity,  — 4  My  friend, 
a  man  can  neither  be  praised  nor  insulted.'  But 
forgive  the  counsels  ;  they  are  very  natural.  I 
remember  the  thought  which  occurred  to  me  when 
some  ingenious  and  spiritual  foreigners  came  to 
America,  was,  Have  you  been  victimized  in  being 
brought  hither  ?  —  or,  prior  to  that,  answer  me  this, 
4  Are  you  victimizable  ? ' 

As  I  have  said,  Nature  keeps  these  sovereignties 
in  her  own  hands,  and  however  pertly  our  sermons 
and  disciplines  would  divide  some  share  of  credit, 
and  teach  that  the  laws  fashion  the  citizen,  she 
goes  her  own  gait  and  puts  the  wisest  in  the  wrong., 
She  makes  very  light  of  gospels  and  prophets,  as 


106  CHARACTER. 

one  who  has  a  great  many  more  to  produce  and  no 
excess  of  time  to  spare  on  any  one.  There  is  a  class 
of  men,  individuals  of  which  appear  at  long  inter 
vals,  so  eminently  endowed  with  insight  and  virtue 
that  they  have  been  unanimously  saluted  as  divine, 
and  who  seem  to  be  an  accumulation  of  that  power 
we  consider.  Divine  persons  are  character  born, 
or,  to  borrow  a  phrase  from  Napoleon,  they  are 
victory  organized.  They  are  usually  received  with 
ill-will,  because  they  are  new  and  because  they  set 
a  bound  to  the  exaggeration  that  has  been  made  of 
the  personality  of  the  last  divine  person.  Nature 
never  rhymes  her  children,  nor  makes  two  men 
alike.  When  we  see  a  great  man  we  fancy  a  re 
semblance  to  some  historical  person,  and  predict 
the  sequel  of  his  character  and  fortune  ;  a  result 
which  he  is  sure  to  disappoint.  None  will  ever 
solve  the  problem  of  his  character  according  to  our 
prejudice,  but  only  in  his  own  high  unprecedented 
way.  Character  wants  room  ;  must  not  be  crowded 
on  by  persons  nor  be  judged  from  glimpses  got 
in  the  press  of  affairs  or  on  few  occasions.  It 
needs  perspective,  as  a  great  building.  It  may  not, 
probably  does  not,  form  relations  rapidly;  and  we 
should  not  require  rash  explanation,  either  on  the 
popular  ethics,  or  on  our  own,  of  its  action. 

I  look  on  Sculpture  as  history.     I  do  not  think 
the   Apollo  and  the  Jove  impossible  in  flesh  and 


CHARACTER.  107 

blood.  Every  trait  which  the  artist  recorded  in 
stone  he  had  seen  in  life,  and  better  than  his  copy,. 
We  have  seen  many  counterfeits,  but  we  are  born 
believers  in  great  men.  How  easily  we  read  in 
old  books,  when  men  were  few,  of  the  smallest 
action  of  the  patriarchs.  We  require  that  a  man 
should  be  so  large  and  columnar  in  the  landscape, 
that  it  should  deserve  to  be  recorded  that  he  arose, 
and  girded  up  his  loins,  and  departed  to  such  a 
place.  The  most  credible  pictures  are  those  of 
majestic  men  who  prevailed  at  their  entrance,  and 
convinced  the  senses  ;  as  happened  to  the  eastern 
magiaii  who  was  sent  to  test  the  merits  of  Zertusht 
or  Zoroaster.  When  the  Yunani  sage  arrived  at 
Balkh,  the  Persians  tell  us,  Gushtasp  appointed  a 
day  on  which  the  Mobeds  of  every  country  should 
assemble,  and  a  golden  chair  was  placed  for  the 
Yunani  sage.  Then  the  beloved  of  Yezdam,  the 
prophet  Zertusht,  advanced  into  the  midst  of  the  as 
sembly.  The  Yunani  sage,  on  seeing  that  chief,  said, 
"  This  form  and  this  gait  cannot  lie,  and  nothing  but 
truth  can  proceed  from  them."  Plato  said  it  was 
impossible  not  to  believe  in  the  children  of  the 
gods,  "  though  they  should  speak  without  probable 
or  necessary  arguments."  I  should  think  myself 
very  unhappy  in  my  associates  if  I  could  not  credit 
the  best  things  in  history.  "  John  Bradshaw,"  says 
Milton,  "  appears  like  a  consul,  from  whom  the 


108  CHARACTER. 

fasces  are  not  to  depart  with  the  year ;  so  that  not 
on  the  tribunal  only,  but  throughout  his  life,  you 
would  regard  him  as  sitting  in  judgment  upon 
kings."  I  find  it  more  credible,  since  it  is  anterior 
information,  that  one  man  should  know  heaven,  as 
the  Chinese  say,  than  that  so  many  men  should 
know  the  world.  "  The  virtuous  prince  confronts 
the  gods,  without  any  misgiving.  He  waits  a  hun 
dred  ages  till  a  sage  comes,  and  does  not  doubt. 
He  who  confronts  the  gods,  without  any  misgiving, 
knows  heaven  ;  he  who  waits  a  hundred  ages  until 
a  sage  comes,  without  doubting,  knows  men.  Hence 
the  virtuous  prince  moves,  and  for  ages  shows  em 
pire  the  way."  But  there  is  110  need  to  seek  remote 
examples.  He  is  a  dull  observer  whose  experience 
has  not  taught  him  the  reality  and  force  of  magic,  as 
well  as  of  chemistry.  The  coldest  precisian  cannot 
go  abroad  without  encountering  inexplicable  influ 
ences.  One  man  fastens  an  eye  on  him  and  the 
graves  of  the  memory  render  up  their  dead ;  the 
secrets  that  make  him  wretched  either  to  keep  or  to 
betray  must  be  yielded  ;  —  another,  and  he  cannot 
speak,  and  the  bones  of  his  body  seem  to  lose  their 
cartilages ;  the  entrance  of  a  friend  adds  grace, 
boldness,  and  eloquence  to  him  ;  and  there  are  per 
sons  he  cannot  choose  but  remember,  who  gave  a 
transcendent  expansion  to  his  thought,  and  kindled 
another  life  in  his  bosom. 


CHARACTER.  109 

What  is  so  excellent  as  strict  relations  of  amity, 
when  they  spring  from  this  deep  root  ?  The  suf 
ficient  reply  to  the  skeptic  who  doubts  the  power 
and  the  furniture  of  man,  is  in  that  possibility  of 
joyful  intercourse  with  persons,  which  makes  the 
faith  and  practice  of  all  reasonable  men.  I  know 
nothing  which  life  has  to  offer  so  satisfying  as  the 
profound  good  understanding  which  can  subsist, 
after  much  exchange  of  good  offices,  between  two 
virtuous  men,  each  of  whom  is  sure  of  himself  and 
sure  of  his  friend.  It  is  a  happiness  which  post 
pones  all  other  gratifications,  and  makes  politics, 
and  commerce,  and  churches,  cheap.  For  when 
men  shall  meet  as  they  ought,  each  a  benefactor,  a 
shower  of  stars,  clothed  with  thoughts,  witli  deeds, 
with  accomplishments,  it  should  be  the  festival  of 
nature  which  all  things  announce.  Of  such  friend 
ship,  love  in  the  sexes  is  the  first  symbol,  as  all 
other  things  are  symbols  of  love.  Those  relations 
to  the  best  men,  which,  at  one  time,  we  reckoned 
the  romances  of  youth,  become,  in  the  progress  of 
the  character,  the  most  solid  enjoyment. 

If  it  were  possible  to  live  in  right  relations 
with  men  !  —  if  we  could  abstain  from  asking  any 
thing  of  them,  from  asking  their  praise,  or  help,  or 
pity,  and  content  us  with  compelling  them  through 
the  virtue  of  the  eldest  laws  !  Could  we  not  deal 
with  a  few  persons,  —  with  one  person,  —  after 


110  CHARACTER. 

the  unwritten  statutes,  and  make  an  experiment  of 
their  efficacy  ?  Could  we  not  pay  our  friend  the 
compliment  of  truth,  of  silence,  of  forbearing? 
Need  we  be  so  eager  to  seek  him  ?  If  we  are  re 
lated,  we  shall  meet.  It  was  a  tradition  of  the  an 
cient  world  that  no  metamorphosis  could  hide  a 
god  from  a  god ;  and  there  is  a  Greek  verse  which 
runs,  — 

"  The  Gods  are  to  each  other  not  unknown." 

Friends  also  follow  the  laws  of  divine  necessity  ; 
they  gravitate  to  each  other,  and  cannot  other 
wise  :  — 

When  each  the  other  shall  avoid, 
Shall  each  by  each  be  most  enjoyed. 

Their  relation  is  not  made,  but  allowed.  The  gods 
must  seat  themselves  without  seneschal  in  our  Olym 
pus,  and  as  they  can  instal  themselves  by  seniority 
divine.  Society  is  spoiled  if  pains  are  taken,  if  the 
associates  are  brought  a  mile  to  meet.  And  if  it 
be  not  society,  it  is  a  mischievous,  low,  degrading 
jangle,  though  made  up  of  the  best.  All  the  great 
ness  of  each  is  kept  back  and  every  foible  in  pain 
ful  activity,  as  if  the  Olympians  should  meet  to  ex 
change  snuff-boxes. 

Life  goes  headlong.  We  chase  some  flying 
scheme,  or  we  are  hunted  by  some  fear  or  com« 
mand  behind  us.  But  if  suddenly  we  encounter  a 


CHARACTER.  Ill 

friend,  we  pause  ;  our  heat  and  hurry  look  foolish 
enough ;  now  pause,  now  possession  is  required,  and 
the  power  to  swell  the  moment  from  the  resources 
of  the  heart.  The  moment  is  all,  in  all  noble  rela 
tions. 

A  divine  person  is  the  prophecy  of  the  mind ;  a 
friend  is  the  hope  of  the  heart.  Our  beatitude 
waits  for  the  fulfilment  of  these  two  in  one.  The 
ages  are  opening  this  moral  force.  All  force  is  the 
shadow  or  symbol  of  that.  Poetry  is  joyful  and 
strong  as  it  draws  its  inspiration  thence.  Men 
write  their  names  on  the  world  as  they  are  filled 
with  this.  History  has  been  mean  ;  our  nations 
have  been  mobs ;  we  have  never  seen  a  man  :  that 
divine  form  we  do  not  yet  know,  but  only  the  dream 
and  prophecy  of  such :  we  do  not  know  the  majestic 
manners  which  belong  to  him,  which  appease  and 
exalt  the  beholder.  We  shall  one  day  see  that  the 
most  private  is  the  most  public  energy,  that  quality 
atones  for  quantity,  and  grandeur  of  character  acts 
in  the  dark,  and  succors  them  who  never  saw  it. 
What  greatness  has  yet  appeared  is  beginnings  and 
encouragements  to  us  in  this  direction.  The  history 
of  those  gods  and  saints  which  the  world  has  writ 
ten  and  then  worshipped,  are  documents  of  charac 
ter.  The  ages  have  exulted  in  the  manners  of  a 
youth  who  owed  nothing  to  fortune,  and  who  was 
hanged  at  the  Tyburn  of  his  nation,  who,  by  the 


112  CHARACTER. 

pure  quality  of  his  nature,  shed  an  epic  splendoi 
around  the  facts  of  his  death  which  has  transfigured 
every  particular  into  an  universal  symbol  for  the 
eyes  of  mankind.  This  great  defeat  is  hitherto  om 
highest  fact.  But  the  mind  requires  a  victory  to> 
the  senses ;  a  force  of  character  which  will  convert 
judge,  jury,  soldier,  and  king  ;  which  will  rule  ani 
mal  and  mineral  virtues,  and  blend  with  the  courses 
of  sap,  of  rivers,  of  winds,  of  stars,  and  of  moral 
agents. 

If  we  «annot  attain  at  a  bound  to  these  gran 
deurs,  at  least  let  us  do  them  homage.  In  society, 
high  advantages  are  set  down  to  the  possessor  as 
disadvantages.  It  requires  the  more  wariness  in 
our  private  estimates.  I  do  not  forgive  in  my 
friends  the  failure  to  know  a  fine  character  and  to 
entertain  it  with  thankful  hospitality.  When  at 
last  that  which  we  have  always  longed  for  is  arrived 
and  shines  on  us  with  glad  rays  out  of  that  far  ce 
lestial  land,  then  to  be  coarse,  then  to  be  critical 
and  treat  such  a  visitant  with  the  jabber  and  sus 
picion  of  the  streets,  argues  a  vulgarity  that  seems 
to  shut  the  doors  of  heaven.  This  is  confusion,  this 
the  right  insanity,  when  the  soul  no  longer  knows 
its  own,  nor  where  its  allegiance,  its  religion,  are 
due.  Is  there  any  religion  but  this,  to  know  that 
wherever  in  the  wide  desert  of  being  the  holy  senti 
ment  we  cherish  has  opened  into  a  flower,  it  blooms 


CHARACTER.  113 

for  me  ?  if  none  sees  it,  I  see  it ;  I  am  aware,  if  I 
alone,  of  the  greatness  of  the  fact.  Whilst  it  blooms, 
I  will  keep  sabbath  or  holy  time,  and  suspend  my 
gloom  and  my  folly  and  jokes.  Nature  is  indulged 
by  the  presence  of  this  guest.  There  are  many 
eyes  that  can  detect  and  honor  the  prudent  and 
household  virtues  ;  there  are  many  that  can  discern 
Genius  on  his  starry  track,  though  the  mob  is  in 
capable  ;  but  when  that  love  which  is  all-suffering, 
all-abstaining,  all-aspiring,  which  has  vowed  to  it 
self  that  it  will  be  a  wretch  and  also  a  fool  in  this 
world  sooner  than  soil  its  white  hands  by  any  com 
pliances,  comes  into  our  streets  and  houses,  —  only 
the  pure  and  aspiring  can  know  its  face,  and  the 
only  compliment  they  can  pay  it  is  to  own  it. 

VOL.  III.  8 


MANNERS. 


•*  How  near  to  good  is  what  is  fair  ? 
Which  we  no  sooner  see, 
But  with  the  lines  and  outward  air 
Our  senses  taken  be. 

Again  yourselves  compose, 
And  now  put  all  the  aptness  on 
Of  Figure,  that  Proportion 

Or  Color  can  disclose  ; 
That  if  those  silent  arts  were  lost, 
Design  and  Picture,  they  might  boast 

From  you  a  newer  ground, 
Instructed  by  the  heightening  sense 
Of  dignity  and  reverence 

In  their  true  motions  found." 

BEN  JONSON 


IY. 
MANNEKS. 


HALF  the  world,  it  is  said,  knows  not  how  the 
other  half  live.  Our  Exploring  Expedition  saw 
the  Feejee  islanders  getting  their  dinner  off  human 
bones;  and  they  are  said  to  eat  their  own  wives 
and  children.  The  husbandry  of  the  modern  in 
habitants  of  Gournou  (west  of  old  Thebes)  is 
philosophical  to  a  fault.  To  set  up  their  house 
keeping  nothing  is  requisite  but  two  or  three 
earthen  pots,  a  stone  to  grind  meal,  and  a  mat 
which  is  the  bed.  The  house,  namely  a  tomb,  is 
ready  without  rent  or  taxes.  No  rain  can  pass 
through  the  roof,  and  there  is  no  door,  for  there  is 
no  want  of  one,  as  there  is  nothing  to  lose.  If  the 
house  do  not  please  them,  they  walk  out  and  enter 
another,  as  there  are  several  hundreds  at  their 
command.  "  It  is  somewhat  singular,"  adds  Bel- 
zoni,  to  whom  we  owe  this  account,  "  to  talk  of 
happiness  among  people  who  live  in  sepulchres, 
among  the  corpses  and  rags  of  an  ancient  nation 
which  they  know  nothing  of."  In  the  deserts  of 


118  MANNERS. 

Borgoo  the  rock-Tibboos  still  dwell  in  caves,  like 
cliff-swallows,  and  the  language  of  these  negroes  is 
compared  by  their  neighbors  to  the  shrieking  of 
bats  and  to  the  whistling  of  birds.  Again,  the  Bor- 
noos  have  no  proper  names ;  individuals  are  called 
after  their  height,  thickness,  or  other  accidental 
quality,  and  have  nicknames  merely.  But  the  salt, 
the  dates,  the  ivory,  and  the  gold,  for  which  these 
horrible  regions  are  visited,  find  their  way  into 
countries  where  the  purchaser  and  consumer  can 
hardly  be  ranked  in  one  race  with  these  cannibals 
and  man-stealers ;  countries  where  man  serves  him 
self  with  metals,  wood,  stone,  glass,  gum,  cotton, 
silk,  and  wool ;  honors  himself  with  architecture  ; 
writes  laws,  and  contrives  to  execute  his  will 
through  the  hands  of  many  nations ;  and,  espe 
cially,  establishes  a  select  society,  running  through 
all  the  countries  of  intelligent  men,  a  self-consti 
tuted  aristocracy,  or  fraternity  of  the  best,  which, 
without  written  law  or  exact  usage  of  any  kind, 
perpetuates  itself,  colonizes  every  new-planted  isl 
and  and  adopts  and  makes  its  own  whatever  per 
sonal  beauty  or  extraordinary  native  endowment 
anywhere  appears. 

What  fact  more  conspicuous  in  modern  history 
than  the  creation  of  the  gentleman  ?  Chivalry  is 
that,  and  loyalty  is  that,  and,  in  English  literature 
half  the  drama,  and  all  the  novels,  from  Sir  Philip 


MANNERS.  119 

Sidney  to  Sir  Walter  Scott,  paint  this  figure.  The 
word  gentleman,  which,  like  the  word  Christian, 
must  hereafter  characterize  the  present  and  the  few 
preceding  centuries  by  the  importance  attached  to 
it,  is  a  homage  to  personal  and  incommunicable 
properties.  Frivolous  and  fantastic  additions  have 
got  associated  with  the  name,  but  the  steady  inter* 
est  of  mankind  in  it  must  be  attributed  to  the  valu 
able  properties  which  it  designates.  An  element 
which  unites  all  the  most  forcible  persons  of  every 
country,  makes  them  intelligible  arid  agreeable  to 
each  other,  and  is  somewhat  so  precise  that  it  is  at 
once  felt  if  an  individual  lack  the  masonic  sign,  — 
cannot  be  any  casual  product,  but  must  be  an  av 
erage  result  of  the  character  and  faculties  univer 
sally  found  in  men.  It  seems  a  certain  permanent 
average ;  as  the  atmosphere  is  a  permanent  compo 
sition,  whilst  so  many  gases  are  combined  only  to 
be  decompounded.  Comme  ilfaut,  is  the  French 
man's  description  of  good  society  :  as  we  must  be. 
It  is  a  spontaneous  fruit  of  talents  and  feelings  of 
precisely  that  class  who  have  most  vigor,  who  take 
the  lead  in  the  world  of  this  hour,  and  though  far 
from  pure,  far  from  constituting  the  gladdest  and 
highest  tone  of  human  feeling,  it  is  as  good  as  the 
whole  society  permits  it  to  be.  It  is  made  of  the 
spirit,  more  than  of  the  talent  of  men,  and  is  a 
compound  result  into  which  every  great  force  en- 


120  MANNERS. 

ters  as  an  ingredient,  namely  virtue,  wit,  beauty, 
wealth,  and  power. 

There  is  something  equivocal  in  all  the  words  in 
use  to  express  the  excellence  of  manners  and  so 
cial  cultivation,  because  the  quantities  are  fluxional, 
and  the  last  effect  is  assumed  by  the  senses  as  the 
cause.  The  word  gentleman  has  not  any  correla 
tive  abstract  to  express  the  quality.  Gentility  is 
mean,  and  gentilesse  is  obsolete.  But  we  must 
keep  alive  in  the  vernacular  the  distinction  be 
tween  fashion,  a  word  of  narrow  and  often  sinister 
meaning,  and  the  heroic  character  which  the  gentle 
man  imports.  The  usual  words,  however,  must  be 
respected ;  they  will  be  found  to  contain  the  root 
of  the  matter.  The  point  of  distinction  in  all  this 
class  of  names,  as  courtesy,  chivalry,  fashion,  and 
the  like,  is  that  the  flower  and  fruit,  not  the  grain 
of  the  tree,  are  contemplated.  It  is  beauty  which 
is  the  aim  this  time,  and  not  worth.  The  result  is 
now  in  question,  although  our  words  intimate  well 
enough  the  popular  feeling  that  the  appearance 
supposes  a  substance.  The  gentleman  is  a  man  of 
truth,  lord  of  his  own  actions,  and  expressing  that 
lordship  in  his  behavior ;  not  in  any  manner  de 
pendent  and  servile,  either  on  persons,  or  opinions, 
or  possessions.  Beyond  this  fact  of  truth  and  real 
force,  the  word  denotes  good -nature  or  benevo 
lence:  manhood  first,  and  then  gentleness.  The 


MANNERS.  121 

popular  notion  certainly  adds  a  condition  of  ease 
and  fortune ;  but  that  is  a  natural  result  of  per 
sonal  force  and  love,  that  they  should  possess  and 
dispense  the  goods  of  the  world.  In  times  of 
violence,  every  eminent  person  must  fall  in  with 
many  opportunities  to  approve  his  stoutness  and 
worth  ;  therefore  every  man's  name  that  emerged 
at  all  from  the  mass  in  the  feudal  ages,  rattles  in 
our  ear  like  a  flourish  of  trumpets.  But  personal 
force  never  goes  out  of  fashion.  That  is  still  par 
amount  to-day,  and  in  the  moving  crowd  of  good 
society  the  men  of  valor  and  reality  are  known 
and  rise  to  their  natural  place.  The  competition 
is  transferred  from  war  to  politics  and  trade,  but 
the  personal  force  appears  readily  enough  in  these 
new  arenas. 

Power  first,  or  no  leading  class.  In  politics  and 
in  trade,  bruisers  and  pirates  are  of  better  promise 
than  talkers  and  clerks.  God  knows  that  all  sorts 
of  gentlemen  knock  at  the  door  ;  but  whenever 
used  in  strictness  and  with  any  emphasis,  the  name 
will  be  found  to  point  at  original  energy.  It  de 
scribes  a  man  standing  in  his  own  right  and  work 
ing  after  untaught  methods.  In  a  good  lord  there 
must  first  be  a  good  animal,  at  least  to  the  extent 
of  yielding  the  incomparable  advantage  of  animal 
spirits.  The  ruling  class  must  have  more,  but 
they  must  have  these,  giving  in  every  company  the 


122  MANNERS. 

sense  of  power,  which  makes  things  easy  to  be 
done  which  daunt  the  wise.  The  society  of  the  en 
ergetic  class,  in  their  friendly  and  festive  meetings, 
is  full  of  courage  and  of  attempts  which  intimidate 
the  pale  scholar.  The  courage  which  girls  exhibit 
is  like  a  battle  of  Lundy's  Lane,  or  a  sea-fight^ 
The  intellect  relies  on  memory  to  make  some  sup 
plies  to  face  these  extemporaneous  squadrons.  But 
memory  is  a  base  mendicant  with  basket  and 
badge,  in  the  presence  of  these  sudden  masters. 
The  rulers  of  society  must  be  up  to  the  work  of  the 
world,  and  equal  to  their  versatile  office  :  men  of 
the  right  Caesarian  pattern,  who  have  great  range  of 
affinity.  I  am  far  from  believing  the  timid  maxim 
of  Lord  Falkland  ("that  for  ceremony  there  must 
go  two  to  it ;  since  a  bold  fellow  will  go  through 
the  cunningest  forms"),  and  am  of  opinion  that 
the  gentleman  is  the  bold  fellow  whose  forms  are 
not  to  be  broken  through  ;  and  only  that  plenteous 
nature  is  rightful  master  which  is  the  complement 
of  whatever  person  it  converses  with.  My  gentle 
man  gives  the  law  where  he  is ;  he  will  outpray 
saints  in  chapel,  outgeneral  veterans  in  the  field, 
and  outshine  all  courtesy  in  the  hall.  He  is  good 
company  for  pirates  and  good  with  academicians  ; 
so  that  it  is  useless  to  fortify  yourself  against  him  ; 
he  has  the  private  entrance  to  all  minds,  and  I 
could  as  easily  exclude  myself,  as  him.  The  fat 


MANNERS.  123 

mous  gentlemen  of  Asia  and  Europe  have  been  of 
this  strong  type  ;  Saladin,  Sapor,  the  Cid,  Julius 
Caesar,  Scipio,  Alexander,  Pericles,  and  the  lordli 
est  personages.  They  sat  very  carelessly  in  their 
chairs,  and  were  too  excellent  themselves,  to  value 
any  condition  at  a  high  rate. 

A  plentiful  fortune  is  reckoned  necessary,  in  the 
popular  judgment,  to  the  completion  of  this  man  of 
the  world  ;  and  it  is  a  material  deputy  which  walks 
through  the  dance  which  the  first  has  led.  Money 
is  not  essential,  but  this  wide  affinity  is,  which  tran 
scends  the  habits  of  clique  and  caste  and  makes  it 
self  felt  by  men  of  all  classes.  If  the  aristocrat  is 
only  valid  in  fashionable  circles  and  not  with  truck 
men,  he  will  never  be  a  leader  in  fashion ;  and  if 
the  man  of  the  people  cannot  speak  on  equal  terms 
with  the  gentleman,  so  that  the  gentleman  shall 
perceive  that  he  is  already  really  of  his  own  or 
der,  he  is  not  to  be  feared.  Diogenes,  Socrates, 
and  Epaminondas,  are  gentlemen  of  the  best  blood 
who  have  chosen  the  condition  of  poverty  when 
that  of  wealth  was  equally  open  to  them.  I  use 
these  old  names,  but  the  men  I  speak  of  are  my 
contemporaries.  Fortune  will  not  supply  to  every 
generation  one  of  these  well  -  appointed  knights, 
but  every  collection  of  men  furnishes  some  exam 
ple  of  the  class;  and  the  politics  of  this  country, 
and  the  trade  of  every  town,  are  controlled  by  these 


124  MANNERS. 

hardy  and  irresponsible  doers,  who  have  invention 
to  take  the  lead,  and  a  broad  sympathy  which  puts 
them  in  fellowship  with  crowds,  and  makes  their 
action  popular. 

The  manners  of  this  class  are  observed  and 
caught  with  devotion  by  men  of  taste.  The  assa 
ciation  of  these  masters  with  each  other  and  with 
men  intelligent  of  their  merits,  is  mutually  agreea 
ble  and  stimulating.  The  good  forms,  the  happiest 
expressions  of  each,  are  repeated  and  adopted.  By 
swift  consent  everything  superfluous  is  dropped, 
everything  graceful  is  renewed.  Fine  manners 
show  themselves  formidable  to  the  uncultivated 
man.  They  are  a  subtler  science  of  defence  to 
parry  and  intimidate  ;  but  once  matched  by  the 
skill  of  the  other  party,  they  drop  the  point  of  the 
sword,  —  points  and  fences  disappear,  and  the  youth 
finds  himself  in  a  more  transparent  atmosphere, 
wherein  life  is  a  less  troublesome  game,  and  not  a 
misunderstanding  rises  between  the  players.  Man 
ners  aim  to  facilitate  life,  to  get  rid  of  impediments 
and  bring  the  man  pure  to  energize.  They  aid  our 
dealing  and  conversation  as  a  railway  aids  travel 
ling,  by  getting  rid  of  all  avoidable  obstructions  of 
the  road  and  leaving  nothing  to  be  conquered  but 
pure  space.  These  forms  very  soon  become  fixed, 
and  a  fine  sense  of  propriety  is  cultivated  with  the 
more  heed  that  it  becomes  a  badge  of  social  and 


MANNERS.  125 

civil  distinctions.  Thus  grows  up  Fashion,  an 
equivocal  semblance,  the  most  puissant,  the  most 
fantastic  and  frivolous,  the  most  feared  and  fol 
lowed,  and  which  morals  and  violence  assault  in 
vain. 

There  exists  a  strict  relation  between  the  class  of 
power  and  the  exclusive  and  polished  circles.  The 
last  are  always  filled  or  filling  from  the  first.  The 
strong  men  usually  give  some  allowance  even  to 
the  petulances  of  fashion,  for  that  affinity  they  find 
in  it.  Napoleon,  child  of  the  revolution,  destroyer 
of  the  old  noblesse,  never  ceased  to  court  the  Fau 
bourg  St.  Germain  ;  doubtless  with  the  feeling  that 
fashion  is  a  homage  to  men  of  his  stamp.  Fashion, 
though  in  a  strange  way,  represents  all  manly  vir 
tue.  It  is  virtue  gone  to  seed :  it  is  a  kind  of  post 
humous  honor.  It  does  not  often  caress  the  great, 
but  the  children  of  the  great :  it  is  a  hall  of  the 
Past.  It  usually  sets  its  face  against  the  great  of 
this  hour.  Great  men  are  not  commonly  in  its 
halls  ;  they  are  absent  in  the  field :  they  are  work 
ing,  not  triumphing.  Fashion  is  made  up  of  their 
children ;  of  those  who  through  the  value  and  vir 
tue  of  somebody,  have  acquired  lustre  to  their  name, 
marks  of  distinction,  means  of  cultivation  and  gen 
erosity,  and  in  their  physical  organization  a  certain 
health  and  excellence  which  secure  to  them,  if  not 
the  highest  power  to  work,  yet  high  power  to  enjoy. 


126  MANNERS. 

The  class  of  power,  the  working  heroes,  the  Cortez, 
the  Nelson,  the  Napoleon,  see  that  this  is  the  festiv* 
ity  and  permanent  celebration  of  such  as  they ;  that 
fashion  is  funded  talent ;  is  Mexico,  Marengo,  and 
Trafalgar  beaten  out  thin  ;  that  the  brilliant  names 
of  fashion  run  back  to  just  such  busy  names  as  their 
own,  fifty  or  sixty  years  ago.  They  are  the  sowers, 
their  sons  shall  be  the  reapers,  and  their  sons,  in 
the  ordinary  course  of  things,  must  yield  the  pos 
session  of  the  harvest  to  new  competitors  with 
keener  eyes  and  stronger  frames.  The  city  is  re 
cruited  from  the  country.  In  the  year  1805,  it  is 
said,  every  legitimate  monarch  in  Europe  was  imbe 
cile.  The  city  would  have  died  out,  rotted,  and 
exploded,  long  ago,  but  that  it  was  reinforced  from 
the  fields.  It  is  only  country  which  came  to  town 
day  before  yesterday  that  is  city  and  court  to-day. 

Aristocracy  and  fashion  are  certain  inevitable  re 
sults.  These  mutual  selections  are  indestructible. 
If  they  provoke  anger  in  the  least  favored  class, 
and  the  excluded  majority  revenge  themselves  on 
the  excluding  minority  by  the  strong  hand  and 
kill  them,  at  once  a  new  class  finds  itself  at  the  top, 
as  certainly  as  cream  rises  in  a  bowl  of  milk :  and 
if  the  people  should  destroy  class  after  class,  until 
two  men  only  were  left,  one  of  these  would  be  the 
leader  and  would  be  involuntarily  served  and  cop 
ied  by  the  other.  You  may  keep  this  minority  out 


MANNERS.  127 

of  sight  and  out  of  mind,  but  it  is  tenacious  of  life, 
and  is  one  of  the  estates  of  the  realm.  I  am  the 
more  struck  with  this  tenacity,  when  I  see  its  work. 
It  respects  the  administration  of  such  unimportant 
matters,  that  we  should  not  look  for  any  durability 
in  its  rule.  We  sometimes  meet  men  under  some 
strong  moral  influence,  as  a  patriotic,  a  literary,  a 
religious  movement,  and  feel  that  the  moral  senti 
ment  rules  man  and  nature.  We  think  all  other 
distinctions  and  ties  will  be  slight  and  fugitive,  this 
of  caste  or  fashion  for  example  ;  yet  come  from 
year  to  year  and  see  how  permanent  that  is,  in  this 
Boston  or  New  York  life  of  man,  where  too  it  has 
not  the  least  countenance  from  the  law  of  the  land. 
Not  in  Egypt  or  in  India  a  firmer  or  more  impas 
sable  line.  Here  are  associations  whose  ties  go 
over  and  under  and  through  it,  a  meeting  of  mer 
chants,  a  military  corps,  a  college  class,  a  fire-club, 
a  professional  association,  a  political,  a  religious 
convention  ;  —  the  persons  seem  to  draw  insepara 
bly  near;  yet,  that  assembly  once  dispersed,  its 
members  will  not  in  the  year  meet  again.  Each 
returns  to  his  degree  in  the  scale  of  good  society, 
porcelain  remains  porcelain,  and  earthen  earthen. 
The  objects  of  fashion  may  be  frivolous,  or  fashion 
may  be  objectless,  but  the  nature  of  this  union  and 
selection  can  be  neither  frivolous  nor  accidental. 
Each  man's  rank  in  that  perfect  graduation  de« 


128  MANNERS. 

pends  on  some  symmetry  in  his  structure  or  some 
agreement  in  his  structure  to  the  symmetry  of  so 
ciety.  Its  doors  unbar  instantaneously  to  a  natu 
ral  claim  of  their  own  kind.  A  natural  gentleman 
finds  his  way  in,  and  will  keep  the  oldest  patrician 
out  who  has  lost  his  intrinsic  rank.  Fashion  un 
derstands  itself  ;  good-breeding  and  personal  supe 
riority  of  whatever  country  readily  fraternize  with 
those  of  every  other.  The  chiefs  of  savage  tribes 
have  distinguished  themselves  in  London  and  Paris 
by  the  purity  of  their  tournure. 

To  say  what  good  of  fashion  we  can,  it  rests  on 
reality,  and  hates  nothing  so  much  as  pretenders ; 
to  exclude  and  mystify  pretenders  and  send  them 
into  everlasting  '  Coventry,'  is  its  delight.  We 
contemn  in  turn  every  other  gift  of  men  of  the 
world;  but  the  habit  even  in  little  and  the  least 
matters  of  not  appealing  to  any  but  our  own  sense 
of  propriety,  constitutes  the  foundation  of  all  chiv 
alry.  There  is  almost  no  kind  of  self-reliance,  so 
it  be  sane  and  proportioned,  which  fashion  does  not 
occasionally  adopt  and  give  it  the  freedom  of  its 
saloons.  A  sainted  soul  is  always  elegant,  and,  if 
it  will,  passes  unchallenged  into  the  most  guarded 
ring.  But  so  will  Jock  the  teamster  pass,  in  some 
crisis  that  brings  him  thither,  and  find  favor,  as 
long  as  his  head  is  not  giddy  with  the  new  circum 
stance,  and  the  iron  shoes  do  not  wish  to  dance  in 


MANNERS.  129 

waltzes  and  cotillons.  For  there  is  nothing  settled 
m  manners,  but  the  laws  of  behavior  yield  to  the 
energy  of  the  individual.  The  maiden  at  her  first 
ball,  the  countryman  at  a  city  dinner,  believes  that 
there  is  a  ritual  according  to  which  every  act  and 
compliment  must  be  performed,  or  the  failing  pai^ 
must  be  cast  out  of  this  presence.  Later  they  learn 
that  good  sense  and  character  make  their  own  forms 
every  moment,  and  speak  or  abstain,  take  wine  or 
refuse  it,  stay  or  go,  sit  in  a  chair  or  sprawl  with 
children  on  the  floor,  or  stand  on  their  head,  or 
what  else  soever,  in  a  new  and  aboriginal  way ;  and 
that  strong  will  is  always  in  fashion,  let  who  will 
be  unfashionable.  All  that  fashion  demands  is 
composure  and  self-content.  A  circle  of  men  per 
fectly  well-bred  would  be  a  company  of  sensible 
persons  in  which  every  man's  native  manners  and 
character  appeared.  If  the  fashionist  have  not  this 
quality,  he  is  nothing.  We  are  such  lovers  of  self- 
reliance  that  we  excuse  in  a  man  many  sins  if  he 
will  show  us  a  complete  satisfaction  in  his  position, 
which  asks  no  leave  to  be,  of  mine,  or  any  man's 
good  opinion.  But  any  deference  to  some  eminent 
man  or  woman  of  the  world,  forfeits  all  privilege 
of  nobility.  He  is  an  underling:  I  have  nothing 
to  do  with  him ;  I  will  speak  with  his  master.  A 
n.ari  should  not  go  where  he  cannot  carry  his  whole 
sphere  or  society  with  him,  —  not  bodily,  the  whole 


130  MANNERS. 

circle  of  his  friends,  but  atmospherically.  lie 
should  preserve  in  a  new  company  the  same  atti 
tude  of  mind  and  reality  of  relation  which  his  daily 
associates  draw  him  to,  else  he  is  shorn  of  his  best 
beams,  and  will  be  an  orphan  in  the  merriest  club. 
"  If  you  could  see  Vich  Ian  Vohr  with  his  tail  on  ! 
But  Vich  Ian  Vohr  must  always  carry  his 
belongings  in  some  fashion,  if  not  added  as  honor, 
then  severed  as  disgrace. 

There  will  always  be  in  society  certain  persons 
who  are  mercuries  of  its  approbation,  and  whose 
glance  will  at  any  time  determine  for  the  curious 
their  standing  in  the  world.  These  are  the  cham 
berlains  of  the  lesser  gods.  Accept  their  coldness 
as  an  omen  of  grace  with  the  loftier  deities,  and 
allow  them  all  their  privilege.  They  are  clear  in 
their  office,  nor  could  they  be  thus  formidable  with 
out  their  own  merits.  But  do  not  measure  the  im 
portance  of  this  class  by  their  pretension,  or  imag 
ine  that  a  fop  can  be  the  dispenser  of  honor  and 
shame.  They  pass  also  at  their  just  rate  ;  for  how 
can  they  otherwise,  in  circles  which  exist  as  a  sort 
of  herald's  office  for  the  sifting  of  character  ? 

As  the  first  thing  man  requires  of  man  is  reality, 
so  that  appears  in  all  the  forms  of  society.  We 
pointedly,  and  by  name,  introduce  the  parties  to 
each  other.  Know  you  before  all  heaven  and  earth, 
that  this  is  Andrew,  and  this  is  Gregory,  —  they 


MANNERS.  131 

look  each  other  in  the  eye  ;  they  grasp  each  other's 
hand,  to  identify  and  signalize  each  other.  It  is  a 
great  satisfaction.  A  gentleman  never  dodges ;  his 
eyes  look  straight  forward,  and  he  assures  the  other 
party,  first  of  all,  that  he  has  been  met.  For  what 
is  it  that  we  seek,  in  so  many  visits  and  hospitals 
ties  ?  Is  it  your  draperies,  pictures,  and  decora 
tions  ?  Or  do  we  not  insatiably  ask,  Was  a  man 
in  the  house  ?  I  may  easily  go  into  a  great  house 
hold  where  there  is  much  substance,  excellent  pro 
vision  for  comfort,  luxury,  and  taste,  and  yet  not 
encounter  there  any  Amphitryon  who  shall  subcr< 
dinate  these  appendages.  I  may  go  into  a  cottage, 
and  find  a  farmer  who  feels  that  he  is  the  man  I 
have  come  to  see,  and  fronts  me  accordingly.  It 
was  therefore  a  very  natural  point  of  old  feudal 
etiquette  that  a  gentleman  who  received  a  visit, 
though  it  were  of  his  sovereign,  should  not  leave 
his  roof,  but  should  wait  his  arrival  at  the  door  of 
his  house.  No  house,  though  it  were  the  Tuileries 
or  the  Escurial,  is  good  for  anything  without  a 
master.  And  yet  we  are  not  often  gratified  by  this 
hospitality.  Every  body  we  know  surrounds  him 
self  with  a  fine  house,  fine  books,  conservatory,  gar 
dens,  equipage  and  all  manner  of  toys,  as  screens 
to  interpose  between  himself  and  his  guest.  Does 
It  not  seem  as  if  man  was  of  a  very  sly,  elusive  na 
ture,  and  dreaded  nothing  so  much  as  a  full  ren 


132  MANNERS. 

centre  front  to  front  with  his  fellow  ?  It  were  un« 
merciful,  I  know,  quite  to  abolish  the  use  of  these 
screens,  which  are  of  eminent  convenience,  whether 
the  guest  is  too  great  or  too  little.  We  call  to 
gether  many  friends  who  keep  each  other  in  play, 
or  by  luxuries  and  ornaments  we  amuse  the  young 
people,  and  guard  our  retirement.  Or  if  perchance 
a  searching  realist  comes  to  our  gate,  before  whose 
eye  we  have  no  care  to  stand,  then  again  we  run 
to  our  curtain,  and  hide  ourselves  as  Adam  at  the 
voice  of  the  Lord  God  in  the  garden.  Cardinal 
Caprara,  the  Pope's  legate  at  Paris,  defended  him 
self  from  the  glances  of  Napoleon  by  an  immense 
pair  of  green  spectacles.  Napoleon  remarked  them, 
and  speedily  managed  to  rally  them  off :  and  yet 
Napoleon,  in  his  turn,  was  not  great  enough,  with 
eight  hundred  thousand  troops  at  his  back,  to  face 
a  pair  of  f reeborn  eyes,  but  fenced  himself  with  eti 
quette  and  within  triple  barriers  of  reserve ;  and, 
as  all  the  world  knows  from  Madame  de  Stael,  was 
wont,  when  he  found  himself  observed,  to  discharge 
his  face  of  all  expression.  But  emperors  and  rich 
men  are  by  no  means  the  most  skilful  masters  of 
good  manners.  No  rentroll  nor  army-list  can  dig 
nify  skulking  and  dissimulation  ;  and  the  first  point 
of  courtesy  must  always  be  truth,  as  really  all  the 
forms  of  good  breeding  point  that  way. 

I  have  just  been  reading,  in  Mr.  Hazlitt's  trans* 


MANNERS,  133 

Tation,  Montaigne's  account  of  his  journey  into 
Italy,  and  am  struck  with  nothing  more  agreeably 
than  the  self-respecting  fashions  of  the  time.  His 
arrival  in  each  place,  the  arrival  of  a  gentleman  of 
France,  is  an  event  of  some  consequence.  Wher 
ever  he  goes  he  pays  a  visit  to  whatever  prince  or 
gentleman  of  note  resides  upon  his  road,  as  a  duty 
to  himself  and  to  civilization.  When  he  leaves  any 
house  in  which  he  has  lodged  for  a  few  weeks,  he 
causes  his  arms  to  be  painted  and  hung  up  as  a  per 
petual  sign  to  the  house,  as  was  the  custom  of  gen 
tlemen, 

The  complement  of  this  graceful  self-respect,  and 
that  of  all  the  points  of  good  breeding  I  most  re 
quire  and  insist  upon,  is  deference.  I  like  that 
every  chair  should  be  a  throne,  and  hold  a  king.  I 
prefer  a  tendency  to  stateliness  to  an  excess  of  fel 
lowship.  Let  the  incommunicable  objects  of  nature 
and  the  metaphysical  isolation  of  man  teach  us  in 
dependence.  Let  us  not  be  too  much  acquainted. 
I  would  have  a  man  enter  his  house  through  a  hall 
filled  with  heroic  and  sacred  sculptures,  that  he 
might  not  want  the  hint  of  tranquillity  and  self- 
poise.  We  should  meet  each  morning  as  from  for 
eign  countries,  and,  spending  the  day  together, 
should  depart  at  night,  as  into  foreign  countries. 
In  all  things  I  would  have  the  island  of  a  man  in 
violate.  Let  us  sit  apart  as  the  gods,  talking  from 


134  MANNERS. 

peak  to  peak  all  round  Olympus.  No  degree  ob 
affection  need  invade  this  religion.  This  is  myrrh 
and  rosemary  to  keep  the  other  sweet.  Lovers 
should  guard  their  strangeness.  If  they  forgive  too 
much,  all  slides  into  confusion  and  meanness.  It 
is  easy  to  push  this  deference  to  a  Chinese  etiquette  : 
but  coolness  and  absence  of  heat  and  haste  indicate 
fine  qualities.  A  gentleman  makes  no  noise ;  a 
lady  is  serene.  Proportionate  is  our  disgust  at 
those  invaders  who  fill  a  studious  house  with  blast 
and  running,  to  secure  some  paltry  convenience. 
Not  less  I  dislike  a  low  sympathy  of  each  with  his 
neighbor's  needs.  Must  we  have  a  good  understand 
ing  with  one  another's  palates  ?  as  foolish  people 
who  have  lived  long  together  know  when  each  wants 
salt  or  sugar.  I  pray  my  companion,  if  he  wishes 
for  bread,  to  ask  me  for  bread,  and  if  he  wishes  for 
sassafras  or  arsenic,  to  ask  me  for  them,  and  not  to 
hold  out  his  plate  as  if  I  knew  already.  Every  nat 
ural  function  can  be  dignified  by  deliberation  and 
privacy.  Let  us  leave  hurry  to  slaves.  The  com 
pliments  and  ceremonies  of  our  breeding  should  re 
call,  however  remotely,  the  grandeur  of  our  destiny. 
The  flower  of  courtesy  does  not  very  well  bido 
handling,  but  if  we  dare  to  open  another  leaf  and 
explore  what  parts  go  to  its  conformation,  we  shall 
find  also  an  intellectual  quality.  To  the  leaders  of 
men,  the  brain  as  well  as  the  flesh  and  the  heart 


MANNERS.  135 

must  furnish  a  proportion.  Defect  in  manners  is 
usually  the  defect  of  fine  perceptions.  Men  are  too 
coarsely  made  for  the  delicacy  of  beautiful  carriage 
and  customs.  It  is  not  quite  sufficient  to  good- 
breeding,  a  union  of  kindness  and  independence. 
We  imperatively  require  a  perception  of,  and  a 
homage  to  beauty  in  our  companions.  Other  vir 
tues  are  in  request  in  the  field  and  workyard,  but  a 
certain  degree  of  taste  is  not  to  be  spared  in  those 
we  sit  with.  I  could  better  eat  with  one  who  did 
not  respect  the  truth  or  the  laws  than  with  a  sloven 
and  unpresentable  person.  Moral  qualities  rule  the 
world,  but  at  short  distances  the  senses  are  despotic. 
The  same  discrimination  of  fit  and  fair  runs  out,  if 
with  less  rigor,  into  all  parts  of  life.  The  average 
spirit  of  the  energetic  class  is  good  sense,  acting 
under  certain  limitations  and  to  certain  ends.  It 
entertains  every  natural  gift.  Social  in  its  nature, 
it  respects  everything  which  tends  to  unite  men.  It 
delights  in  measure.  The  love  of  beauty  is  mainly 
the  love  of  measure  or  proportion.  The  person  who 
screams,  or  uses  the  superlative  degree,  or  converses 
with  heat,  puts  whole  drawing-rooms  to  flight.  If 
you  wish  to  be  loved,  love  measure.  You  must 
have  genius  or  a  prodigious  usefulness  if  you  will 
hide  the  want  of  measure.  This  perception  comes 
in  to  polish  and  perfect  the  parts  of  the  social  in 
strument.  Society  will  pardrn  much  to  genius  and 


136  MANNERS. 

special  gifts,  but,  being  in  its  nature  a  convention, 
it  levies  what  is  conventional,  or  what  belongs  to 
coming  together.  That  makes  the  good  and  bad  of 
manners,  namely  what  helps  or  hinders  fellowship. 
For  fashion  is  not  good  sense  absolute,  but  relative  ; 
not  good  sense  private,  but  good  sense  entertaining 
company.  It  hates  corners  and  sharp  points  of 
character,  hates  quarrelsome,  egotistical,  solitary, 
and  gloomy  people  ;  hates  whatever  can  interfere 
with  total  blending  of  parties  ;  whilst  it  values  all 
peculiarities  as  in  the  highest  degree  refreshing, 
which  can  consist  with  good  fellowship.  And  be 
sides  the  general  infusion  of  wit  to  heighten  civil 
ity,  the  direct  splendor  of  intellectual  power  is  ever 
welcome  in  fine  society  as  the  costliest  addition  to 
its  rule  and  its  credit. 

The  dry  light  must  shine  in  to  adorn  our  festival, 
but  it  must  be  tempered  and  shaded,  or  that  will 
also  offend.  Accuracy  is  essential  to  beauty,  and 
quick  perceptions  to  politeness,  but  not  too  quick 
perceptions.  One  may  be  too  punctual  and  too 
precise.  He  must  leave  the  omniscience  of  busi 
ness  at  the  door,  when  he  comes  into  the  palace  of 
beauty.  Society  loves  Creole  natures,  and  sleepy 
languishing  manners,  so  that  they  cover  sense, 
grace  and  good- will:  the  air  of  drowsy  strength, 
which  disarms  criticism ;  perhaps  because  such  a 
person  seems  to  reserve  himself  for  the  best  of  thg 


MANNERS.  137 

game,  and  not  spend  himself  on  surfaces;  an  ignor 
ing  eye,  which  does  not  see  the  annoyances,  shifts, 
and  inconveniences  that  cloud  the  brow  and  smother 
the  voice  of  the  sensitive. 

Therefore  besides  personal  force  and  so  much 
perception  as  constitutes  unerring  taste,  society  de 
mands  in  its  patrician  class  another  element  al 
ready  intimated,  which  it  significantly  terms  good 
nature,  —  expressing  all  degrees  of  generosity,  from 
the  lowest  willingness  and  faculty  to  oblige,  up  to 
the  heights  of  magnanimity  and  love.  Insight  we 
must  have,  or  we  shall  run  against  one  another  and 
miss  the  way  to  our  food  ;  but  intellect  is  selfish 
and  barren.  The  secret  of  success  in  society  is  a 
certain  heartiness  and  sympathy.  A  man  who  is 
not  happy  in  the  company  cannot  find  any  word 
in  his  memory  that  will  fit  the  occasion.  All  his 
information  is  a  little  impertinent.  A  man  who  is 
happy  there,  finds  in  every  turn  of  the  conversa 
tion  equally  lucky  occasions  for  the  introduction  of 
that  which  he  has  to  say.  The  favorites  of  society, 
and  what  it  calls  whole  souls,  are  able  men  and  of 
more  spirit  than  wit,  who  have  no  uncomfortable 
egotism,  but  who  exactly  fill  the  hour  and  the  com 
pany  ;  contented  and  contenting,  at  a  marriage  or  a 
funeral,  a  ball  or  a  jury,  a  water-party  or  a  shoot 
ing-match.  England,  which  is  rich  in  gentlemen, 
furnished,  in  the  beginning  of  the  present  century. 


138  MANNERS. 

a  good  model  of  that  genius  which  the  world  loves, 
in  Mr.  Fox,  who  added  to  his  great  abilities  the 
most  social  disposition  and  real  love  of  men.  Par 
liamentary  history  has  few  better  passages  than  the 
debate  in  which  Burke  and  Fox  separated  in  the 
House  of  Commons  ;  when  Fox  urged  on  his  old 
friend  the  claims  of  old  friendship  with  such  ten 
derness  that  the  house  was  moved  to  tears.  An 
other  anecdote  is  so  close  to  my  matter,  that  I  must 
hazard  the  story.  A  tradesman  who  had  long 
dunned  him  for  a  note  of  three  hundred  guineas, 
found  him  one  day  counting  gold,  and  demanded 
payment :  —  "  No,"  said  Fox,  "  I  owe  this  money 
to  Sheridan  ;  it  is  a  debt  of  honor ;  if  an  accident 
should  happen  to  me,  he  has  nothing  to  show." 
"  Then,"  said  the  creditor,  "  I  change  my  debt  into 
a  debt  of  honor,"  and  tore  the  note  in  pieces.  Fox 
thanked  the  man  for  his  confidence  and  paid  him, 
saying,  "  his  debt  was  of  older  standing,  and  Sheri 
dan  must  wait."  Lover  of  liberty,  friend  of  the 
Hindoo,  friend  of  the  African  slave,  he  possessed  a 
great  personal  popularity;  and  Napoleon  said  of 
him  on  the  occasion  of  his  visit  to  Paris,  in  1805, 
"  Mr.  Fox  will  always  hold  the  first  place  in  an 
assembly  at  the  Tuileries." 

We  may  easily  seem  ridiculous  in  our  eulogy  of 
courtesy,  whenever  we  insist  on  benevolence  as  its 
foundation.  The  painted  phantasm  Fashion  rises  to 


MANNERS.  139 

east  a  species  of  derision  on  what  we  say.  But  I 
will  neither  be  driven  from  some  allowance  to  Fash 
ion  as  a  symbolic  institution,  nor  from  the  belief 
that  love  is  the  basis  of  courtesy.  We  must  obtain 
that,  if  we  can ;  but  by  all  means  we  must  affirm 
this.  Life  owes  much  of  its  spirit  to  these  sharp 
contrasts.  Fashion,  which  affects  to  be  honor,  is 
often,  in  all  men's  experience,  only  a  ballroom-code. 
Yet  so  long  as  it  is  the  highest  circle  in  the  imagi 
nation  of  the  best  heads  on  the  planet,  there  is 
something  necessary  and  excellent  in  it ;  for  it  is 
not  to  be  supposed  that  men  have  agreed  to  be  the 
dupes  of  anything  preposterous  ;  and  the  respect 
which  these  mysteries  inspire  in  the  most  rude  and 
sylvan  characters,  and  the  curiosity  with  which  de 
tails  of  high  life  are  read,  betray  the  universality 
of  the  love  of  cultivated  manners.  I  know  that  a 
comic  disparity  would  be  felt,  if  we  should  enter 
the  acknowledged  '  first  circles '  and  apply  these 
terrific  standards  of  justice,  beauty,  and  benefit  to 
the  individuals  actually  found  there.  Monarchs 
and  heroes,  sages  and  lovers,  these  gallants  are  not. 
Fashion  has  many  classes  and  many  rules  of  proba 
tion  and  admission,  and  not  the  best  alone.  There 
is  not  only  the  right  of  conquest,  which  genius  pre 
tends,  —  the  individual  demonstrating  his  natural 
aristocracy  best  of  the  best ;  —  but  less  claims  will 
pass  for  the  time;  for  Fashion  loves  lions,  and 


140  MANNERS. 

points  like  Circe  to  her  horned  company.  This 
gentleman  is  this  afternoon  arrived  from  Denmark ; 
and  that  is  my  Lord  Ride,  who  came  yesterday 
from  Bagdat ;  here  is  Captain  Friese,  from  Cape 
Turnagain  ;  and  Captain  Symmes,  from  the  inte 
rior  of  the  earth  ;  and  Monsieur  Jovaire,  who  came 
down  this  morning  in  a  balloon  ;  Mr.  Hobnail,  the 
reformer;  and  Reverend  Jul  Bat,  who  has  con 
verted  the  whole  torrid  zone  in  his  Sunday  school  ; 
and  Signor  Torre  del  Greco,  who  extinguished  Ve 
suvius  by  pouring  into  it  the  Bay  of  Naples  ;  Spahi, 
the  Persian  ambassador ;  and  Tul  Wil  Shan,  the 
exiled  nabob  of  Nepaul,  whose  saddle  is  the  new 
moon.  —  But  these  are  monsters  of  one  day,  and 
to-morrow  will  be  dismissed  to  their  holes  and. 
dens  ;  for  in  these  rooms  every  chair  is  waited  for. 
The  artist,  the  scholar,  and,  in  general,  the  clerisy, 
win  their  way  up  into  these  places  and  get  repre 
sented  here,  somewhat  on  this  footing  of  conquest. 
Another  mode  is  to  pass  through  all  the  degrees, 
spending  a  year  and  a  day  in  St.  Michael's  Square, 
being  steeped  in  Cologne  water,  and  perfumed,  and 
dined,  and  introduced,  and  properly  grounded  in 
all  the  biography  and  politics  and  anecdotes  of  the 
boudoirs. 

Yet  these  fineries  may  have  grace  and  wit.  Let 
there  be  grotesque  sculpture  about  the  gates  and 
offices  of  temples.  Let  the  creed  and  command. 


MANNERS.  141 

ments  even  have  the  saucy  homage  of  parody.  The 
forms  of  politeness  universally  express  benevolence 
in  superlative  degrees.  What  if  they  are  in  the 
mouths  of  selfish  men,  and  used  as  means  of  self 
ishness  ?  What  if  the  false  gentleman  almost 
bows  the  true  out  of  the  world  ?  What  if  the  false 
gentleman  contrives  so  to  address  his  companion 
as  civilly  to  exclude  all  others  from  his  discourse, 
and  also  to  make  them  feel  excluded  ?  Real  ser 
vice  will  not  lose  its  nobleness.  All  generosity  is 
not  merely  French  and  sentimental;  nor  is  it  to 
be  concealed  that  living  blood  and  a  passion  of 
kindness  does  at  last  distinguish  God's  gentleman 
from  Fashion's.  The  epitaph  of  Sir  Jenkin  Grout 
is  not  wholly  unintelligible  to  the  present  age : 
"  Here  lies  Sir  Jenkin  Grout,  who  loved  his  friend 
and  persuaded  his  enemy :  what  his  mouth  ate,  his 
hand  paid  for :  what  his  servants  robbed,  he  re 
stored  :  if  a  woman  gave  him  pleasure,  he  sup 
ported  her  in  pain  :  he  never  forgot  his  children ; 
and  whoso  touched  his  finger,  drew  after  it  his 
whole  body."  Even  the  line  of  heroes  is  not  ut 
terly  extinct.  There  is  still  ever  some  admirable 
person  in  plain  clothes,  standing  on  the  wharf,  who 
jumps  in  to  rescue  a  drowning  man  ;  there  is  still 
some  absurd  inventor  of  charities ;  some  guide  and 
comforter  of  runaway  slaves  i  some  friend  of  Po 
land  ;  some  Philhellene ;  some  fanatic  who  plants 


142  MANNERS. 

shade-trees  for  the  second  and  third  generation, 
and  orchards  when  he  is  grown  old  j  some  well-con 
cealed  piety  ;  some  just  man  happy  in  an  ill  fame  ; 
some  youth  ashamed  of  the  favors  of  fortune  and 
impatiently  casting  them  on  other  shoulders.  And 
these  are  the  centres  of  society,  on  which  it  returns 
for  fresh  impulses.  These  are  the  creators  of 
Fashion,  which  is  an  attempt  to  organize  beauty 
of  behavior.  The  beautiful  and  the  generous  are, 
in  the  theory,  the  doctors  and  apostles  of  this 
church :  Scipio,  and  the  Cid,  and  Sir  Philip  Sid 
ney,  and  Washington,  and  every  pure  and  valiant 
heart  who  worshipped  Beauty  by  word  and  by 
deed.  The  persons  who  constitute  the  natural 
aristocracy  are  not  found  in  the  actual  aristocracy, 
or  only  on  its  edge ;  as  the  chemical  energy  of  the 
spectrum  is  found  to  be  greatest  just  outside  of  the 
spectrum.  Yet  that  is  the  infirmity  of  the  senes 
chals,  who  do  not  know  their  sovereign  when  he 
appears.  The  theory  of  society  supposes  the  exist 
ence  and  sovereignty  of  these.  It  divines  afar  off 
their  coming.  It  says  with  the  elder  gods,  — 

"  As  Heaven  and  Earth  are  fairer  far 
Than  Chaos  and  blank  Darkness,  though  once  chiefs; 
And  as  we  show  beyond  that  Heaven  and  Earth, 
In  form  and  shape  compact  and  beautiful; 
So,  on  our  heels  a  fresh  perfection  treads; 
A  power,  more  strong  in  beauty,  born  of  us, 


MANNERS.  143 

And  fated  to  excel  us,  as  we  pass 
In  glory  that  old  Darkness: 

for,  't  is  the  eternal  law, 

That  first  in  beauty  shall  be  first  hi  might.** 

Therefore,  within  the  ethnical  circle  of  good  so» 
eiety  there  is  a  narrower  and  higher  circle,  concen 
tration  of  its  light,  and  flower  of  courtesy,  to  which 
there  is  always  a  tacit  appeal  of  pride  and  refer 
ence,  as  to  its  inner  and  imperial  court ;  the  parlia 
ment  of  love  and  chivalry.  And  this  is  constituted 
of  those  persons  in  whom  heroic  dispositions  are 
native ;  with  the  love  of  beauty,  the  delight  in  so 
ciety,  and  the  power  to  embellish  the  passing  day. 
If  the  individuals  who  compose  the  purest  circles  of 
aristocracy  in  Europe,  the  guarded  blood  of  cen 
turies,  should  pass  in  review,  in  such  manner  as 
that  we  could  at  leisure  and  critically  inspect  their 
behavior,  we  might  find  no  gentleman  and  no  lady ; 
for  although  excellent  specimens  of  courtesy  and 
high-breeding  would  gratify  us  in  the  assemblage, 
in  the  particidars  we  should  detect  offence.  Be 
cause  elegance  comes  of  no  breeding,  but  of  birth. 
There  must  be  romance  of  character,  or  the  most 
fastidious  exclusion  of  impertinencies  will  not  avail. 
It  must  be  genius  which  takes  that  direction:  it 
must  be  not  courteous,  but  courtesy.  High  be 
havior  is  as  rare  in  fiction  as  it  is  in  fact.  Scott  is 
praised  for  the  fidelity  with  which  he  painted  the 


144  MANNERS. 

demeanor  and  conversation  of  the  superior  classes. 
Certainly,  kings  and  queens,  nobles  and  great  la 
dies,  had  some  right  to  complain  of  the  absurdity 
that  had  been  put  in  their  mouths  before  the  days 
of  Waverley;  but  neither  does  Scott's  dialogue 
bear  criticism.  His  lords  brave  each  other  in 
smart  epigrammatic  speeches,  but  the  dialogue  is 
in  costume,  and  does  not  please  on  the  second 
reading  :  it  is  not  warm  with  life.  In  Shakspeare 
alone  the  speakers  do  not  strut  and  bridle,  the  dia 
logue  is  easily  great,  and  he  adds  to  so  many  titles 
that  of  being  the  best- bred  man  in  England  and 
in  Christendom.  Once  or  twice  in  a  lifetime  we 
are  permitted  to  enjoy  the  charm  of  noble  manners, 
in  the  presence  of  a  man  or  woman  who  have  no 
bar  in  their  nature,  but  whose  character  emanates 
freely  in  their  word  and  gesture.  A  beautiful 
form  is  better  than  a  beautiful  face;  a  beautiful 
behavior  is  better  than  a  beautiful  form  :  it  gives 
a  higher  pleasure  than  statues  or  pictures  ;  it  is  the 
finest  of  the  fine  arts.  A  man  is  but  a  little  thing 
in  the  midst  of  the  objects  of  nature,  yet,  by  the 
moral  quality  radiating  from  his  countenance  he 
may  abolish  all  considerations  of  magnitude,  and 
in  his  manners  equal  the  majesty  of  the  world.  I 
have  seen  an  individual  whose  manners,  though 
wholly  within  the  conventions  of  elegant  society, 
Were  never  learned  there,  but  were  original  and 


MANNERS.  145 

commanding  and  held  out  protection  and  prosper 
ity  ;  one  who  did  not  need  the  aid  of  a  court-suit, 
hut  carried  the  holiday  in  his  eye ;  who  exhilarated 
the  fancy  by  flinging  wide  the  doors  of  new  modes 
of  existence;  who  shook  off  the  captivity  of  eti 
quette,  with  happy,  spirited  bearing,  good-natured 
and  free  as  Robin  Hood  ;  yet  with  the  port  of  an 
emperor,  if  need  be,  —  calm,  serious,  and  fit  to 
stand  the  gaze  of  millions. 

The  open  air  and  the  fields,  the  street  and  pub 
lic  chambers  are  the  places  where  Man  executes  his 
will ;  let  him  yield  or  divide  the  sceptre  at  the  door 
of  the  house.  Woman,  with  her  instinct  of  behav 
ior,  instantly  detects  in  man  a  love  of  trifles,  any 
coldness  or  imbecility,  or,  in  short,  any  want  of 
that  large,  flowing,  and  magnanimous  deportment 
which  is  indispensable  as  an  exterior  in  the  hall. 
Our  American  institutions  have  been '  friendly  to 
her,  and  at  this  moment  I  esteem  it  a  chief  felicity 
of  this  country,  that  it  excels  in  women.  A  cer 
tain  awkward  consciousness  of  inferiority  in  the 
men  may  give  rise  to  the  new  chivalry  in  behalf  of 
Woman's  Eights.  Certainly  let  her  be  as  much 
better  placed  in  the  laws  and  in  social  forms  as  the , 
most  zealous  reformer  can  ask,  but  I  confide  so  en 
tirely  in  her  inspiring  and  musical  nature,  that  I 
believe  only  herself  can  show  us  how  she  shall  be 
served.  The  wonderful  generosity  of  her  sent* 

VOL.    III.  1C 


146  MANNERS. 

ments  raises  her  at  times  into  heroical  and  godlike 
regions,  and  verifies  the  pictures  of  Minerva,  Juno, 
or  Polymnia;  and  by  the  firmness  with  which  she 
treads  her  upward  path,  she  convinces  the  coarsest 
calculators  that  another  road  exists  than  that  which 
their  feet  know.  But  besides  those  who  make 
good  in  our  imagination  the  place  of  muses  and  of 
Delphic  Sibyls,  are  there  not  women  who  fill  our 
vase  with  wine  and  roses  to  the  brim,  so  that  the 
wine  runs  over  and  fills  the  house  with  perfume  ; 
who  inspire  us  with  courtesy  ;  who  unloose  our 
tongues  and  we  speak ;  who  anoint  our  eyes  and 
we  see  ?  "We  say  things  we  never  thought  to  have 
said ;  for  once,  our  walls  of  habitual  reserve  van 
ished  and  left  us  at  large ;  we  were  children  play 
ing  with  children  in  a  wide  field  of  flowers.  Steep 
us,  we  cried,  in  these  influences,  for  days,  for 
weeks,  and  we  shall  be  sunny  poets  and  will  write 
out  in  many-colored  words  the  romance  that  you 
are.  Was  it  Hafiz  or  Firdousi  that  said  of  his 
Persian  Lilla,  She  was  an  elemental  force,  and  as 
tonished  me  by  her  amount  of  life,  when  I  saw  her 
day  after  day  radiating,  every  instant,  redundant 
joy  and  grace  on  all  around  her  ?  She  was  a  sol 
vent  powerful  to  reconcile  all  heterogeneous  per 
sons  into  one  society :  like  air  or  water,  an  element 
of  such  a  great  range  of  affinities  that  it  combines 
readily  with  a  thousand  substances.  Where  she  is 


MANNERS.  147 

present  all  others  will  be  more  than  they  are  wont 
She  was  a  unit  and  whole,  so  that  whatsoever  she 
did,  became  her.  She  had  too  much  sympathy  and 
desire  to  please,  than  that  you  could  say  her  man 
ners  were  marked  with  dignity,  yet  no  princess 
could  surpass  her  clear  and  erect  demeanor  on  each 
occasion.  She  did  not  study  the  Persian  grammar, 
nor  the  books  of  the  seven  poets,  but  all  the  poems 
of  the  seven  seemed  to  be  written  upon  her.  For 
though  the  bias  of  her  nature  was  not  to  thought, 
but  to  sympathy,  yet  was  she  so  perfect  in  her  own 
nature  as  to  meet  intellectual  persons  by  the  ful 
ness  of  her  heart,  warming  them  by  her  sentiments ; 
believing,  as  she  did,  that  by  dealing  nobly  with 
all,  all  would  show  themselves  noble. 

I  know  that  this  Byzantine  pile  of  chivalry  or 
Fashion,  which  seems  so  fair  and  picturesque  to 
those  who  look  at  the  contemporary  facts  for  sci 
ence  or  for  entertainment,  is  not  equally  pleasant 
to  all  spectators.  The  constitution  of  our  society 
makes  it  a  giant's  castle  to  the  ambitious  youth 
who  have  not  found  their  names  enrolled  in  its 
Golden  Book,  and  whom  it  has  excluded  from  its 
coveted  honors  and  privileges.  They  have  yet  to 
learn  that  its  seeming  grandeur  is  shadowy  and  rel 
ative  :  it  is  great  by  their  allowance  ;  its  proudest 
gates  will  fly  open  at  the  approach  of  their  courage 


i48  MANNERS. 

and  virtue.  For  the  present  distress,  however,  oi 
those  who  are  predisposed  to  suffer  from  the  tyr 
annies  of  this  caprice,  there  are  easy  remedies.  Ta 
remove  your  residence  a  couple  of  miles,  or  at  most 
four,  will  commonly  relieve  the  most  extreme  sus 
ceptibility.  For  the  advantages  which  fashion  val 
ues  are  plants  which  thrive  in  very  confined  locali 
ties,  in  a  few  streets  namely.  Out  of  this  precinct 
they  go  for  nothing ;  are  of  no  use  in  the  farm,  in 
the  forest,  in  the  market,  in  war,  in  the  nuptial  so 
ciety,  in  the  literary  or  scientific  circle,  at  sea,  in 
friendship,  in  the  heaven  of  thought  or  virtue. 

But  we  have  lingered  long  enough  in  these 
painted  courts.  The  worth  of  the  thing  signified 
must  vindicate  our  taste  for  the  emblem.  Every 
thing  that  is  called  fashion  and  courtesy  hum 
bles  itself  before  the  cause  and  fountain  of  honor, 
creator  of  titles  and  dignities,  namely  the  heart 
of  love.  This  is  the  royal  blood,  this  the  fire, 
which,  in  all  countries  and  contingencies,  will  work 
after  its  kind  and  conquer  and  expand  all  that 
approaches  it.  This  gives  new  meanings  to  every 
fact.  This  impoverishes  the  rich,  suffering  no  gran 
deur  but  its  own.  What  is  rich  ?  Are  you  rich 
enough  to  help  anybody  ?  to  succor  the  unfashion 
able  and  the  eccentric?  rich  enough  to  make  the 
Canadian  in  his  wagon,  the  itinerant  with  his  con 
sul's  paper  which  commends  him  "  To  the  char* 


MANNERS.  149 

table,"  the  swarthy  Italian  with  his  few  broken 
words  of  English,  the  lame  pauper  hunted  by  over 
seers  from  town  to  town,  even  the  poor  insane  or 
besotted  wreck  of  man  or  woman,  feel  the  noble  ex 
ception  of  your  presence  and  your  house  from  the 
general  bleakness  and  stoniness ;  to  make  such  feel 
that  they  were  greeted  with  a  voice  which  made 
them  both  remember  and  hope  ?  What  is  vulgar 
but  to  refuse  the  claim  on  acute  and  conclusive 
reasons  ?  What  is  gentle,  but  to  allow  it,  and  give 
their  heart  and  yours  one  holiday  from  the  national 
caution  ?  Without  the  rich  heart,  wealth  is  an 
ugly  beggar.  The  king  of  Schiraz  could  not  afford 
to  be  so  bountiful  as  the  poor  Osinan  who  dwelt 
at  his  gate.  Osman  had  a  humanity  so  broad  and 
deep  that  although  his  speech  was  so  bold  and  free 
with  the  Koran  as  to  disgust  all  the  dervishes,  yet 
was  there  never  a  poor  outcast,  eccentric,  or  insane 
man,  some  fool  who  had  cut  off  his  beard,  or  who 
had  been  mutilated  under  a  vow,  or  had  a  pet  mad 
ness  in  his  brain,  but  fled  at  once  to  him ;  that  great 
heart  lay  there  so  sunny  and  hospitable  in  the  cen 
tre  of  the  country,  that  it  seemed  as  if  the  instinct 
of  all  sufferers  drew  them  to  his  side.  And  the 
madness  which  he  harbored  he  did  not  share.  Is 
not  this  to  be  rich  ?  this  only  to  be  rightly  rich  ? 

But  I  shall  hear  without  pain  that  I  play  the 
courtier  very  ill,  and  talk  of  that  which  I  do  not 


150  MANNERS. 

well  understand.  It  is  easy  to  see  that  what  is 
called  by  distinction  society  and  fashion  has  good 
laws  as  well  as  bad,  has  much  that  is  necessary, 
and  much  that  is  absurd.  Too  good  for  banning, 
and  too  bad  for  blessing,  it  reminds  us  of  a  tra 
dition  of  the  pagan  mythology,  in  any  attempt  to 
settle  its  character.  '  I  overheard  Jove,  one  day,' 
said  Silenus,  '  talking  of  destroying  the  earth ;  he 
said  it  had  failed  ;  they  were  all  rogues  and  vixens, 
who  went  from  bad  to  worse,  as  fast  as  the  days 
succeeded  each  other.  Minerva  said  she  hoped  not ; 
they  were  only  ridiculous  little  creatures,  with  this 
odd  circumstance,  that  they  had  a  blur,  or  indeter 
minate  aspect,  seen  far  or  seen  near ;  if  you  called 
them  bad,  they  would  appear  so;  if  you  called 
them  good,  they  would  appear  so  ;  and  there  was 
no  one  person  or  action  among  them  which  would 
not  puzzle  her  owl,  much  more  all  Olympus,  to 
know  whether  it  was  fundamentally  bad  or  good.' 


GIFTS. 


Gifts  of  one  who  loved  me,  — 
T  was  high  time  they  came ; 
"When  he  ceased  to  love  me, 
Time  they  stopped  for  shame. 


V. 
GIFTS. 


IT  is  said  that  the  world  is  in  a  state  of  bank 
ruptcy;  that  the  world  owes  the  world  more  than 
the  world  can  pay,  and  ought  to  go  into  chancery 
and  be  sold.  I  do  not  think  this  general  insolvency, 
which  involves  in  some  sort  all  the  population,  to 
be  the  reason  of  the  difficulty  experienced  at  Christ 
mas  and  New  Year  and  other  times,  in  bestowing 
gifts  ;  since  it  is  always  so  pleasant  to  be  generous, 
though  very  vexatious  to  pay  debts.  But  the  im 
pediment  lies  in  the  choosing.  If  at  any  time  it 
comes  into  my  head  that  a  present  is  due  from  me 
to  somebody,  I  am  puzzled  what  to  give,  until  the 
opportunity  is  gone.  Flowers  and  fruits  are  al 
ways  fit  presents  ;  flowers,  because  they  are  a  proud 
assertion  that  a  ray  of  beauty  outvalues  all  the 
utilities  of  the  world.  These  gay  natures  contrast 
with  the  somewhat  stern  countenance  of  ordinary 
nature :  they  are  like  music  heard  out  of  a  work 
house.  Nature  does  not  cocker  us ;  we  are  chil 
dren,  not  pets ;  she  is  not  fond  ;  everything  is 


154  GIFTS. 

dealt  to  us  without  fear  or  favor,  after  severe  uni 
versal  laws.  Yet  these  delicate  flowers  look  like 
the  frolic  and  interference  of  love  and  beauty. 
Men  use  to  tell  us  that  we  love  flattery  even  though 
we  are  not  deceived  by  it,  because  it  shows  that 
we  are  of  importance  enough  to  be  courted.  Some 
thing  like  that  pleasure,  the  flowers  give  us  :  what 
am  I  to  whom  these  sweet  hints  are  addressed  ? 
Fruits  are  acceptable  gifts,  because  they  are  the 
flower  of  commodities,  and  admit  of  fantastic  val 
ues  being  attached  to  them.  If  a  man  should  send 
to  me  to  come  a  hundred  miles  to  visit  him  and 
should  set  before  me  a  basket  of  fine  summer-fruit, 
I  should  think  there  was  some  proportion  between 
the  labor  and  the  reward. 

For  common  gifts,  necessity  makes  pertinences 
and  beauty  every  day,  and  one  is  glad  when  an  im 
perative  leaves  him  no  option  ;  since  if  the  man  at 
the  door  have  no  shoes,  you  have  not  to  consider 
whether  you  could  procure  him  a  paint-box.  And 
as  it  is  always  pleasing  to  see  a  man  eat  bread,  or 
drink  water,  in  the  house  or  out  of  doors,  so  it 
is  always  a  great  satisfaction  to  supply  these  first 
wants.  Necessity  does  everything  well.  In  our  con 
dition  of  universal  dependence  it  seems  heroic  to 
let  the  petitioner  be  the  judge  of  his  necessity,  and 
to  give  all  that  is  asked,  though  at  great  inconven 
ience.  If  it  be  a  fantastic  desire,  it  is  better  to 


GIFTS.  155 

leave  to  others  the  office  of  punishing  him.  I  can 
think  of  many  parts  I  should  prefer  playing  to  that 
of  the  Furies.  Next  to  things  of  necessity,  the 
rule  for  a  gift,  which  one  of  my  friends  prescribed, 
is  that  we  might  convey  to  some  person  that  which 
properly  belonged  to  his  character,  and  was  easily 
associated  with  him  in  thought.  But  our  tokens 
of  compliment  and  love  are  for  the  most  part  bar 
barous.  Eings  and  other  jewels  are  not  gifts,  but 
apologies  for  gifts.  The  only  gift  is  a  portion  of 
thyself.  Thou  must  bleed  for  me.  Therefore  the 
poet  brings  his  poem ;  the  shepherd,  his  lamb ;  the 
farmer,  corn  ;  the  miner,  a  gem ;  the  sailor,  coral 
and  shells ;  the  painter,  his  picture ;  the  girl,  a 
handkerchief  of  her  own  sewing.  This  is  right  and 
pleasing,  for  it  restores  society  in  so  far  to  the  pri 
mary  basis,  when  a  man's  biography  is  conveyed 
in  his  gift,  and  every  man's  wealth  is  an  index  of 
his  merit.  But  it  is  a  cold  lifeless  business  when 
you  go  to  the  shops  to  buy  me  something  which 
does  not  represent  your  life  and  talent,  but  a  gold 
smith's.  This  is  fit  for  kings,  and  rich  men  who 
represent  kings,  and  a  false  state  of  property,  to 
make  presents  of  gold  and  silver  stuffs,  as  a  kind 
of  symbolical  sin-offering,  or  payment  of  black 
mail. 

The  law  of  benefits  is  a  difficult  channel,  which 
requires  careful  sailing,  or  rude  boats.     It  is  not 


156  GIFTS. 

the  office  of  a  man  to  receive  gifts.  How  dare  you 
give  them  ?  We  wish  to  be  self -sustained.  We  do 
not  quite  forgive  a  giver.  The  hand  that  feeds  us 
is  in  some  danger  of  being  bitten.  We  can  receive 
anything  from  love,  for  that  is  a  way  of  receiving 
it  from  ourselves  ;  but  not  from  any  one  who  as« 
sumes  to  bestow.  We  sometimes  hate  the  meat 
which  we  eat,  because  there  seems  something  of 
degrading  dependence  in  living  by  it :  — 

"  Brother,  if  Jove  to  thee  a  present  make, 
Take  heed  that  from  his  hands  thou  nothing  take." 

We  ask  the  whole.  Nothing  less  will  content  us. 
We  arraign  society  if  it  do  not  give  us,  besides 
earth  and  fire  and  water,  opportunity,  love,  rever 
ence,  and  objects  of  veneration. 

He  is  a  good  man  who  can  receive  a  gift  well. 
We  are  either  glad  or  sorry  at  a  gift,  and  both 
emotions  are  unbecoming.  Some  violence  I  think 
is  done,  some  degradation  borne,  when  I  rejoice  or 
grieve  at  a  gift.  I  am  sorry  when  my  independence 
is  invaded,  or  when  a  gift  comes  from  such  as  do 
not  know  my  spirit,  and  so  the  act  is  not  supported ; 
and  if  the  gift  pleases  me  overmuch,  then  I  should 
be  ashamed  that  the  donor  should  read  my  heart, 
and  see  that  I  love  his  commodity,  and  not  him. 
The  gift,  to  be  true,  must  be  the  flowing  of  the 
giver  unto  me,  correspondent  to  my  flowing  unto 


GIFTS.  157 

him.  When  the  waters  are  at  level,  then  my  goods 
pass  to  him,  and  his  to  me.  All  his  are  mine,  all 
mine  his.  I  say  to  him,  How  can  you  give  me  this 
pot  of  oil  or  this  flagon  of  wine  when  all  your  oil 
and  wine  is  mine,  which  belief  of  mine  this  gift 
seems  to  deny  ?  Hence  the  fitness  of  beautiful,  not 
useful  things,  for  gifts.  This  giving  is  flat  usurpa 
tion,  and  therefore  when  the  beneficiary  is  ungrate 
ful,  as  all  beneficiaries  hate  all  Timons,  not  at  all 
considering  the  value  of  the  gift  but  looking  back 
to  the  greater  store  it  was  taken  from,  —  I  rather 
sympathize  with  the  beneficiary  than  with  the  anger 
of  my  lord  Timon.  For  the  expectation  of  gratitude 
is  mean,  and  is  continually  punished  by  the  total  in 
sensibility  of  the  obliged  person.  It  is  a  great  hap 
piness  to  get  off  without  injury  and  heart-burning 
from  one  who  has  had  the  ill-luck  to  be  served  by 
you.  It  is  a  very  onerous  business,  this  of  being 
served,  and  the  debtor  naturally  wishes  to  give  you 
a  slap.  A  golden  text  for  these  gentlemen  is  that 
which  I  so  admire  in  the  Buddhist,  who  never 
thanks,  and  who  says,  "  Do  not  flatter  your  bene 
factors." 

The  reason  of  these  discords  I  conceive  to  be  that 
there  is  no  commensurability  between  a  man  and 
any  gift.  You  cannot  give  anything  to  a  magnani 
mous  person.  After  you  have  served  him  he  at 
once  puts  you  in  debt  by  his  magnanimity.  The 


158  GIFTS. 

service  a  man  renders  his  friend  is  trivial  and  self- 
ish  compared  with  the  service  he  knows  his  friend 
stood  in  readiness  to  yield  him,  alike  before  he  had 
begun  to  serve  his  friend,  and  now  also.  Compared 
with  that  good- will  I  bear  my  friend,  the  benefit  it  is 
in  my  power  to  render  him  seems  small.  Besides, 
our  action  on  each  other,  good  as  well  as  evil,  is  so 
incidental  and  at  random  that  we  can  seldom  hear 
the  acknowledgments  of  any  person  who  would 
thank  us  for  a  benefit,  without  some  shame  and 
humiliation.  We  can  rarely  strike  a  direct  stroke, 
but  must  be  content  with  an  oblique  one ;  we  sel 
dom  have  the  satisfaction  of  yielding  a  direct  bene 
fit  which  is  directly  received.  But  rectitude  scat 
ters  favors  on  every  side  without  knowing  it,  and 
receives  with  wonder  the  thanks  of  all  people. 

I  fear  to  breathe  any  treason  against  the  majesty 
of  love,  which  is  the  genius  and  god  of  gifts,  and  to 
whom  we  must  not  affect  to  prescribe.  Let  him 
give  kingdoms  or  flower-leaves  indifferently.  There 
are  persons  from  whom  we  always  expect  fairy- 
tokens  ;  let  us  not  cease  to  expect  them.  This  is 
prerogative,  and  not  to  be  limited  by  our  municipal 
rules.  For  the  rest,  I  like  to  see  that  we  cannot  be 
bought  and  sold.  The  best  of  hospitality  and  of 
generosity  is  also  not  in  the  will,  but  in  fate.  I  find 
that  I  am  not  much  to  you ;  you  do  not  need  me ; 
you  do  not  feel  me  ;  then  am  I  thrust  out  of  doors, 


GIFTS.  159 

bhough  you  proffer  me  house  and  lands.  No  ser 
vices  are  of  any  value,  but  only  likeness.  When  I 
have  attempted  to  join  myself  to  others  by  services, 
it  proved  an  intellectual  trick,  —  no  more.  They 
eat  your  service  like  apples,  and  leave  you  out. 
But  love  them,  and  they  feel  you  and  delight  in 
you  all  the  time. 


NATURE. 


The  rounded  world  is  fair  to  see, 

Nine  times  folded  in  mystery : 

Though  baffled  seers  cannot  impart 

The  secret  of  its  laboring  heart, 

Throb  thine  with  Nature's  throbbing  breast, 

And  all  is  clear  from  east  to  west. 

Spirit  that  lurks  each  form  within 

Beckons  to  spirit  of  its  kin  ; 

Self-kindled  every  atom  glows, 

And  hints  the  future  which  it  owes. 


VI. 

NATUEE. 


THERE  are  days  which  occur  in  this  climate,  at 
almost  any  season  of  the  year,  wherein  the  world 
reaches  its  perfection  ;  when  the  air,  the  heavenly 
bodies  and  the  earth,  make  a  harmony,  as  if  nature 
would  indulge  her  offspring ;  when,  in  these  bleak 
upper  sides  of  the  planet,  nothing  is  to  desire  that 
we  have  heard  of  the  happiest  latitudes,  and  we 
bask  in  the  shining  hours  of  Florida  and  Cuba ; 
when  everything  that  has  life  gives  sign  of  satis 
faction,  and  the  cattle  that  lie  on  the  ground  seem 
to  have  great  and  tranquil  thoughts.  These  halcy 
ons  may  be  looked  for  with  a  little  more  assurance 
m  that  pure  October  weather  which  we  distinguish 
by  the  name  of  the  Indian  summer.  The  day,  im 
measurably  long,  sleeps  over  the  broad  hills  and 
warm  wide  fields.  To  have  lived  through  all  its 
Bunny  hours,  seems  longevity  enough.  The  soli 
tary  places  do  not  seem  quite  lonely.  At  the  gates 
of  the  forest,  the  surprised  man  of  the  world  is 
forced  to  leave  his  city  estimates  of  great  and 


164  NATURE. 

small,  wise  and  foolish.  The  knapsack  of  custom 
falls  off  his  back  with  the  first  step  he  takes  into 
these  precincts.  Here  is  sanctity  which  shames 
our  religions,  and  reality  which  discredits  our  he 
roes.  Here  we  find  Nature  to  be  the  circumstance 
which  dwarfs  every  other  circumstance,  and  judges 
like  a  god  all  men  that  come  to  her.  We  have 
crept  out  of  our  close  and  crowded  houses  into 
the  night  and  morning,  and  we  see  what  majes 
tic  beauties  daily  wrap  us  in  their  bosom.  How 
willingly  we  would  escape  the  barriers  which  ren 
der  them  comparatively  impotent,  escape  the  so 
phistication  and  second  thought,  and  suffer  nature 
to  intrance  us.  The  tempered  light  of  the  woods 
is  like  a  perpetual  morning,  and  is  stimulating  and 
heroic.  The  anciently  -  reported  spells  of  these 
places  creep  on  us.  The  stems  of  pines,  hemlocks, 
and  oaks  almost  gleam  like  iron  on  the  excited  eye. 
The  incommunicable  trees  begin  to  persuade  us  to 
live  with  them,  and  quit  our  life  of  solemn  trifles. 
Here  no  history,  or  church,  or  state,  is  interpolated 
on  the  divine  sky  and  the  immortal  year.  How 
easily  we  might  walk  onward  into  the  opening  land 
scape,  absorbed  by  new  pictures  and  by  thoughts 
fast  succeeding  each  other,  until  by  degrees  the  rec 
ollection  of  home  was  crowded  out  of  the  mind,  all 
memory  obliterated  by  the  tyranny  of  the  present* 
and  we  were  led  in  triumph  by  nature. 


NATURE.  165 

These  enchantments  are  medicinal,  they  sober 
and  heal  us.  These  are  plain  pleasures,  kindly  and 
native  to  us.  We  come  to  our  own,  and  make 
friends  with  matter,  which  the  ambitious  chatter 
of  the  schools  would  persuade  us  to  despise.  We 
never  can  part  with  it ;  the  mind  loves  its  old  home c. 
as  water  to  our  thirst,  so  is  the  rock,  the  ground,  to 
our  eyes  and  hands  and  feet.  It  is  firm  water  ;  it 
is  cold  flame  ;  what  health,  what  affinity !  Ever 
an  old  friend,  ever  like  a  dear  friend  and  brother 
when  we  chat  affectedly  with  strangers,  comes  in 
this  honest  face,  and  takes  a  grave  liberty  with  us, 
and  shames  us  out  of  our  nonsense.  Cities  give 
not  the  human  senses  room  enough.  We  go  out 
daily  and  nightly  to  feed  the  eyes  on  the  horizon, 
and  require  so  much  scope,  just  as  we  need  water 
for  our  bath.  There  are  all  degrees  of  natural  in 
fluence,  from  these  quarantine  powers  of  nature,  up 
to  her  dearest  and  gravest  ministrations  to  the  im 
agination  and  the  soul.  There  is  the  bucket  of 
cold  water  from  the  spring,  the  wood-fire  to  which 
the  chilled  traveller  rushes  for  safety,  —  and  there 
is  the  sublime  moral  of  autumn  and  of  noon.  We 
nestle  in  nature,  and  draw  our  living  as  parasites 
from  her  roots  and  grains,  and  we  receive  glances 
from  the  heavenly  bodies,  which  call  us  to  solitude 
and  foretell  the  remotest  future.  The  blue  zenith 
is  the  point  in  which  romance  and  reality  meet.  I 


166  NATURE. 

think  if  we  should  be  rapt  away  into  all  that  we 
dream  of  heaven,  and  should  converse  with  Gabriel 
and  Uriel,  the  upper  sky  would  be  all  that  would 
remain  of  our  furniture. 

It  seems  as  if  the  day  was  not  wholly  profane  in 
which  we  have  given  heed  to  some  natural  object. 
The  fall  of  snowflakes  in  a  still  air,  preserving  to 
each  crystal  its  perfect  form  ;  the  blowing  of  sleet 
over  a  wide  sheet  of  water,  and  over  plains ;  the 
waving  ryefield  ;  the  mimic  waving  of  acres  of 
houstonia,  whose  innumerable  florets  whiten  and 
ripple  before  the  eye  :  the  reflections  of  trees  and 
flowers  in  glassy  lakes  ;  the  musical  steaming  odor 
ous  south  wind,  which  converts  all  trees  to  wind- 
harps  ;  the  crackling  and  spurting  of  hemlock  in 
the  flames,  or  of  pine  logs,  which  yield  glory  to  the 
walls  and  faces  in  the  sittingroom,  —  these  are  the 
music  and  pictures  of  the  most  ancient  religion. 
My  house  stands  in  low  land,  with  limited  outlook, 
and  on  the  skirt  of  the  village.  But  I  go  with  my 
friend  to  the  shore  of  our  little  river,  and  with  one 
stroke  of  the  paddle  I  leave  the  village  politics  and 
personalities,  yes,  and  the  world  of  villages  and 
personalities,  behind,  and  pass  into  a  delicate  realm 
of  sunset  and  moonlight,  too  bright  almost  for  spot 
ted  man  to  enter  without  novitiate  and  probation. 
We  penetrate  bodily  this  incredible  beauty ;  we 
dip  our  hands  in  this  painted  element;  our  eyes 


NATURE.  167 

are  bathed  in  these  lights  and  forms.  A  holi 
day,  a  villeggiatura,  a  royal  revel,  the  proudest, 
most  heart-rejoicing  festival  that  valor  and  beauty, 
power  and  taste,  ever  decked  and  enjoyed,  estab 
lishes  itself  on  the  instant.  These  sunset  clouds, 
these  delicately  emerging  stars,  with  their  private 
and  ineffable  glances,  signify  it  and  proffer  it.  I 
am  taught  the  poorness  of  our  invention,  the  ugli 
ness  of  towns  and  palaces.  Art  and  luxury  have 
early  learned  that  they  must  work  as  enhancement 
and  sequel  to  this  original  beauty.  I  am  overin- 
structed  for  my  return.  Henceforth  I  shall  be 
hard  to  please.  I  cannot  go  back  to  toys.  I  am 
grown  expensive  and  sophisticated.  I  can  no 
longer  live  without  elegance,  but  a  countryman 
shall  be  my  master  of  revels.  He  who  knows  the 
most ;  he  who  knows  what  sweets  and  virtues  are 
in  the  ground,  the  waters,  the  plants,  the  heavens, 
and  how  to  come  at  these  enchantments,  —  is  the 
rich  and  royal  man.  Only  as  far  as  the  masters  of 
the  world  have  called  in  nature  to  their  aid,  can 
they  reach  the  height  of  magnificence.  This  is  the 
meaning  of  their  hanging-gardens,  villas,  garden- 
houses,  islands,  parks  and  preserves,  to  back  their 
faulty  personality  with  these  strong  accessories.  I 
do  not  wonder  that  the  landed  interest  should  be 
invincible  in  the  State  with  these  dangerous  auxil- 
iaries.  These  bribe  and  invite ;  not  kings,  not  pal 


168  NATURE. 

aces,  not  men,  not  women,  but  these  tender  and 
poetic  stars,  eloquent  of  secret  promises.  We  heard 
what  the  rich  man  said,  we  knew  of  his  villa,  his 
grove,  his  wine  and  his  company,  but  the  provoca 
tion  and  point  of  the  invitation  came  out  of  these 
beguiling  stars.  In  their  soft  glances  I  see  what 
men  strove  to  realize  in  some  Versailles,  or  Paphos, 
or  Ctesiphon.  Indeed,  it  is  the  magical  lights  of 
the  horizon  and  the  blue  sky  for  the  background 
which  save  all  our  works  of  art,  which  were  other 
wise  bawbles.  When  the  rich  tax  the  poor  with  ser 
vility  and  obsequiousness,  they  should  consider  the 
effect  of  men  reputed  to  be  the  possessors  of  nature, 
on  imaginative  minds.  Ah  !  if  the  rich  were  rich 
as  the  poor  fancy  riches  !  A  boy  hears  a  military 
band  play  on  the  field  at  night,  and  he  has  kings 
and  queens  and  famous  chivalry  palpably  before 
him.  He  hears  the  echoes  of  a  horn  in  a  hill  coun 
try,  in  the  Notch  Mountains,  for  example,  which 
converts  the  mountains  into  an  ^Eolian  harp,  — 
and  this  supernatural  tiralira  restores  to  him  the 
Dorian  mythology,  Apollo,  Diana,  and  all  divine 
hunters  and  huntresses.  Can  a  musical  note  be  so 
lofty,  so  haughtily  beautiful !  To  the  poor  young 
poet,  thus  fabulous  is  his  picture  of  society ;  he  is 
loyal ;  he  respects  the  rich  ;  they  are  rich  for  the 
sake  of  his  imagination  ;  how  poor  his  fancy  would 
be,  if  they  were  not  rich  K  That  they  have  some 


NATURE.  169 

high-fenced  grove  which  they  call  a  park ;  that 
they  live  in  larger  and  better-garnished  saloons 
than  he  has  visited,  and  go  in  coaches,  keeping  only 
the  society  of  the  elegant,  to  watering-places  and  to 
distant  cities,  —  these  make  the  groundwork  from 
which  he  has  delineated  estates  of  romance,  com 
pared  with  which  their  actual  possessions  are  shan 
ties  and  paddocks.  The  muse  herself  betrays  her 
son,  and  enhances  the  gifts  of  wealth  and  well-born 
beauty  by  a  radiation  out  of  the  air,  and  clouds, 
and  forests  that  skirt  the  road,  —  a  certain  haughty 
favor,  as  if  from  patrician  genii  to  patricians,  a 
kind  of  aristocracy  in  nature,  a  prince  of  the  power 
of  the  air. 

The  moral  sensibility  which  makes  Edens  and. 
Tempes  so  easily,  may  not  be  always  found,  but  the 
material  landscape  is  never  far  off.  We  can  find 
these  enchantments  without  visiting  the  Como  Lake, 
or  the  Madeira  Islands.  We  exaggerate  the  praises 
of  local  scenery.  In  every  landscape  the  point  of 
astonishment  is  the  meeting  of  the  sky  and  the 
earth,  and  that  is  seen  from  the  first  hillock 
as  well  as  from  the  top  of  the  Alleghanies.  The 
stars  at  night  stoop  down  over  the  brownest,  home 
liest  common  with  all  the  spiritual  magnificence 
which  they  shed  on  the  Campagna,  or  on  the  mar 
ble  deserts  of  Egypt.  The  uprolled  clouds  and  the 
colors  of  morning  and  evening  will  transfigure 


170  NATURE. 

maples  and  alders.  The  difference  between  land 
scape  and  landscape  is  small,  but  there  is  great 
difference  in  the  beholders.  There  is  nothing  so 
wonderful  in  any  particular  landscape  as  the  neces 
sity  of  being  beautiful  under  which  every  landscape 
lies.  Nature  cannot  be  surprised  in  undress.  Beau 
ty  breaks  in  everywhere. 

But  it  is  very  easy  to  outrun  the  sympathy  of 
readers  on  this  topic,  which  schoolmen  called  natura 
naturata,  or  nature  passive.  One  can  hardly  speak 
directly  of  it  without  excess.  It  is  as  easy  to  broach 
in  mixed  companies  what  is  called  "  the  subject  of 
religion."  A  susceptible  person  does  not  like  to  in 
dulge  his  tastes  in  this  kind  without  the  apology  of 
some  trivial  necessity :  he  goes  to  see  a  wood-lot,  or 
to  look  at  the  crops,  or  to  fetch  a  plant  or  a  mineral 
from  a  remote  locality,  or  he  carries  a  fowling-piece 
or  a  fishing-rod.  I  suppose  this  shame  must  have 
a  good  reason.  A  dilettantism  in  nature  is  barren 
and  unworthy.  The  fop  of  fields  is  no  better  than 
his  brother  of  Broadway.  Men  are  naturally  hunt 
ers  and  inquisitive  of  wood-craft,  and  I  suppose 
that  such  a  gazetteer  as  wood-cutters  and  Indians 
should  furnish  facts  for,  would  take  place  in  the 
most  sumptuous  drawing-rooms  of  all  the  "Wreaths" 
and  "  Flora's  chaplets  "  of  the  bookshops ;  yet  or 
dinarily,  whether  we  are  too  clumsy  for  so  subtle  a 
topic,  or  from  whatever  cause,  as  soon  as  men  begin 


NATURE.  171 

-  to  write  on  nature,  they  fall  into  euphuism.  Fri 
volity  is  a  most  unfit  tribute  to  Pan,  who  ought  to 
be  represented  in  the  mythology  as  the  most  con 
tinent  of  gods.  I  would  not  be  frivolous  before 
the  admirable  reserve  and  prudence  of  time,  yet  I 
cannot  renounce  the  right  of  returning  often  to  this 
old  topic.  The  multitude  of  false  churches  accred 
its  the  true  religion.  Literature,  poetry,  science  are 
the  homage  of  man  to  this  unfathomed  secret,  con 
cerning  which  no  sane  man  can  affect  an  indiffer 
ence  or  incuriosity.  Nature  is  loved  by  what  is 
best  in  us.  It  is  loved  as  the  city  of  God,  although, 
or  rather  because  there  is  no  citizen.  The  sunset 
is  unlike  anything  that  is  underneath  it :  it  wants 
men.  And  the  beauty  of  nature  must  always  seem 
unreal  and  mocking,  until  the  landscape  has  human 
figures  that  are  as  good  as  itself.  If  there  were 
good  men,  there  would  never  be  this  rapture  in  na 
ture.  If  the  king  is  in  the  palace,  nobody  looks  at 
the  walls.  It  is  when  he  is  gone,  and  the  house  is 
filled  with  grooms  and  gazers,  that  we  turn  from 
the  people  to  find  relief  in  the  majestic  men  that 
are  suggested  by  the  pictures  and  the  architecture. 
The  critics  who  complain  of  the  sickly  separation 
of  the  beauty  of  nature  from  the  thing  to  be  done, 
must  consider  that  our  hunting  of  the  picturesque 
is  inseparable  from  our  protest  against  false  society. 
Man  is  fallen ;  nature  is  erect,  and  serves  as  a 


172  NATURE. 

differential  thermometer,  detecting  the  presence  or 
absence  of  the  divine  sentiment  in  man.  By  fault 
of  our  dulness  and  selfishness  we  are  looking  up  to 
nature,  but  when  we  are  convalescent,  nature  will 
look  up  to  us.  We  see  the  foaming  brook  with 
compunction  :  if  our  own  life  flowed  with  the  right 
energy,  we  should  shame  the  brook.  The  stream  of 
zeal  sparkles  with  real  fire,  and  not  with  reflex 
rays  of  sun  and  moon.  Nature  may  be  as  selfishly 
studied  as  trade.  Astronomy  to  the  selfish  becomes 
astrology ;  psychology,  mesmerism  (with  intent  to 
show  where  our  spoons  are  gone) ;  and  anatomy 
and  physiology  become  phrenology  and  palmistry. 

But  taking  timely  warning,  and  leaving  many 
things  unsaid  on  this  topic,  let  us  not  longer  omit 
our  homage  to  the  Efficient  Nature,  natura  natu- 
rans,  the  quick  cause  before  which  all  forms  flee  as 
the  driven  snows ;  itself  secret,  its  works  driven 
before  it  in  flocks  and  multitudes,  (as  the  ancients 
represented  nature  by  Proteus,  a  shepherd,)  and  in 
undescribable  variety.  It  publishes  itself  in  crea 
tures,,  reaching  from  particles  and  spiculaB  through 
transformation  on  transformation  to  the  highest 
symmetries,  arriving  at  consummate  results  without 
a  shock  or  a  leap.  A  little  heat,  that  is  a  little  mo 
tion,  is  all  that  differences  the  bald,  dazzling  white 
and  deadly  cold  poles  of  the  earth  from  the  prolific 
tropical  climates.  All  changes  pass  without  vie* 


NATURE.  173 

lence,  by  reason  of  the  two  cardinal  conditions  of 
boundless  space  and  boundless  time.  Geology  has 
initiated  us  into  the  secularity  of  nature,  and  taught 
us  to  disuse  our  dame-school  measures,  and  exchange 
our  Mosaic  and  Ptolemaic  schemes  for  her  large 
style.  We  knew  nothing  rightly,  for  want  of  per 
spective.  Now  we  learn  what  patient  periods  must 
round  themselves  before  the  rock  is  formed ;  then 
before  the  rock  is  broken,  and  the  first  lichen  race 
has  disintegrated  the  thinnest  external  plate  into 
soil,  and  opened  the  door  for  the  remote  Flora, 
Fauna,  Ceres,  and  Pomona  to  come  in.  How  far 
off  yet  is  the  trilobite  !  how  far  the  quadruped ! 
how  inconceivably  remote  is  man  !  All  duly  arrive, 
and  then  race  after  race  of  men.  It  is  a  long  way 
from  granite  to  the  oyster ;  farther  yet  to  Plato  and 
the  preaching  of  the  immortality  of  the  soul.  Yet 
all  must  come,  as  surely  as  the  first  atom  has  two 
sides. 

Motion  or  change  and  identity  or  rest  are  the 
first  and  second  secrets  of  nature  :  —  Motion  and 
Rest.  The  whole  code  of  her  laws  may  be  written 
on  the  thumbnail,  or  the  signet  of  a  ring.  The 
whirling  bubble  on  the  surface  of  a  brook  admits 
us  to  the  secret  of  the  mechanics  of  the  sky.  Every 
Bhell  on  the  beach  is  a  key  to  it.  A  little  water 
made  to  rotate  in  a  cup  explains  the  formation  of 
the  simpler  shells ;  the  addition  of  matter  from 


174  NATURE. 

year  to  year  arrives  at  last  at  the  most  complex 
forms ;  and  yet  so  poor  is  nature  with  all  her  craft, 
that  from  the  beginning  to  the  end  of  the  universe 
she  has  but  one  stuff,  —  but  one  stuff  with  its  two 
ends,  to  serve  up  all  her  dream-like  variety.  Com 
pound  it  how  she  will,  star,  sand,  fire,  water,  tree, 
man,  it  is  still  one  stuff,  and  betrays  the  same  prop 
erties. 

Nature  is  always  consistent,  though  she  feigns 
to  contravene  her  own  laws.  She  keeps  her  laws, 
and  seems  to  transcend  them.  She  arms  and  equips 
an  animal  to  find  its  place  and  living  in  the  earth, 
and  at  the  same  time  she  arms  and  equips  another 
animal  to  destroy  it.  Space  exists  to  divide  crea 
tures  ;  but  by  clothing  the  sides  of  a  bird  with  a  few 
feathers  she  gives  him  a  petty  omnipresence.  The 
direction  is  forever  onward,  but  the  artist  still  goes 
back  for  materials  and  begins  again  with  the  first 
elements  on  the  most  advanced  stage  :  otherwise  all 
goes  to  ruin.  If  we  look  at  her  work,  we  seem  to 
catch  a  glance  of  a  system  in  transition.  Plants  are 
the  young  of  the  world,  vessels  of  health  and  vigor ; 
but  they  grope  ever  upward  towards  consciousness ; 
the  trees  are  imperfect  men,  and  seem  to  bemoan 
their  imprisonment,  rooted  in  the  ground.  The 
animal  is  the  novice  and  probationer  of  a  more 
advanced  order.  The  men,  though  young,  having 
tasted  the  first  drop  from  the  cup  of  thought,  aro 


NATURE.  175 

already  dissipated :  the  maples  and  ferns  are  still 
uncorrupt ;  yet  no  doubt  when  they  come  to  con 
sciousness  they  too  will  curse  and  swear.  Flowers 
so  strictly  belong  to  youth  that  we  adult  men  soon 
come  to  feel  that  their  beautiful  generations  con 
cern  not  us :  we  have  had  our  day ;  now  let  the 
children  have  theirs.  The  flowers  jilt  us,  and  we 
are  old  bachelors  with  our  ridiculous  tenderness. 

Things  are  so  strictly  related,  that  according  to 
the  skill  of  the  eye,  from  any  one  object  the  parts 
and  properties  of  any  other  may  be  predicted.  If 
we  had  eyes  to  see  it,  a  bit  of  stone  from  the  city 
wall  would  certify  us  of  the  necessity  that  man 
must  exist,  as  readily  as  the  city.  That  identity 
makes  us  all  one,  and  reduces  to  nothing  great  in 
tervals  on  our  customary  scale.  We  talk  of  devia 
tions  from  natural  life,  as  if  artificial  life  were  not 
also  natural.  The  smoothest  curled  courtier  in  the 
boudoirs  of  a  palace  has  an  animal  nature,  rude 
and  aboriginal  as  a  white  bear,  omnipotent  to  its 
own  ends,  and  is  directly  related,  there  amid  es 
sences  and  billetsdoux,  to  Himmaleh  mountain- 
chains  and  the  axis  of  the  globe.  If  we  consider 
how  much  we  are  nature's,  we  need  not  be  supersti 
tious  about  towns,  as  if  that  terrific  or  benefic  force 
did  not  find  us  there  also,  and  fashion  cities.  Na 
ture,  who  made  the  mason,  made  the  house.  We 
may  easily  hear  too  much  of  rural  influences.  The 


176  NATURE. 

cool  disengaged  air  of  natural  objects  makes  them 
enviable  to  us,  chafed  and  irritable  creatures  with 
red  faces,  and  we  think  we  shall  be  as  grand  as 
they  if  we  camp  out  and  eat  roots ;  but  let  us  be 
men  instead  of  woodchucks  and  the  oak  and  the 
elm  shall  gladly  serve  us,  though  we  sit  in  chairs 
of  ivory  on  carpets  of  silk. 

This  guiding  identity  runs  through  all  the  sur 
prises  and  contrasts  of  the  piece,  and  characterizes 
every  law.  Man  carries  the  world  in  his  head,  the 
whole  astronomy  and  chemistry  suspended  in  a 
thought.  Because  the  history  of  nature  is  charac 
tered  in  his  brain,  therefore  is  he  the  prophet  and 
discoverer  of  her  secrets.  Every  known  fact  in 
natural  science  was  divined  by  the  presentiment  of 
somebody,  before  it  was  actually  verified.  A  man 
does  not  tie  his  shoe  without  recognizing  laws  which 
bind  the  farthest  regions  of  nature  :  moon,  plant, 
gas,  crystal,  are  concrete  geometry  and  numberSc 
Common  sense  knows  its  own,  and  recognizes  the 
fact  at  first  sight  in  chemical  experiment.  The 
common  sense  of  Franklin,  Dalton,  Davy  and 
Black,  is  the  same  common  sense  which  made  the 
arrangements  which  now  it  discovers. 

If  the  identity  expresses  organized  rest,  the  coun 
ter  action  runs  also  into  organization.  The  astron 
omers  said, '  Give  us  matter  and  a  little  motion  and 
we  will  construct  the  universe.  It  is  not  enough 


NATURE.  177 

that  we  should  have  matter,  we  must  also  have 
a  single  impulse,  one  shove  to  launch  the  mass  and 
generate  the  harmony  of  the  centrifugal  and  centrip 
etal  forces.  Once  heave  the  ball  from  the  hand, 
and  we  can  show  how  all  this  mighty  order  grew.' 
— 4  A  very  unreasonable  postulate, '  said  the  meta 
physicians,  'and  a  plain  begging  of  the  question0 
Could  you  not  prevail  to  know  the  genesis  of  pro 
jection,  as  well  as  the  continuation  of  it  ? '  Nature, 
meanwhile,  had  not  waited  for  the  discussion,  but, 
right  or  wrong,  bestowed  the  impulse,  and  the  balls 
rolled.  It  was  no  great  affair,  a  mere  push,  but  the 
astronomers  were  right  in  making  much  of  it,  for 
there  is  no  end  to  the  consequences  of  the  act.  That 
famous  aboriginal  push  propagates  itself  through 
all  the  balls  of  the  system,  and  through  every  atom 
of  every  ball ;  through  all  the  races  of  creatures, 
and  through  the  history  and  performances  of  every 
individual.  Exaggeration  is  in  the  course  of  things. 
Nature  sends  no  creature,  no  man  into  the  world 
without  adding  a  small  excess  of  his  proper  quality. 
Given  the  planet,  it  is  still  necessary  to  add  the 
impulse  ;  so  to  every  creature  nature  added  a  little 
violence  of  direction  in  its  proper  path,  a  shove  to 
put  it  on  its  way ;  in  every  instance  a  slight  gen 
erosity,  a  drop  too  much.  Without  electricity  the 
air  would  rot,  and  without  this  violence  of  direc 
tion  which  men  and  women  have,  without  a  spice  of 

VOL.  in  12 


178  NATURE. 

bigot  and  fanatic,  no  excitement,  no  efficiency.  We 
aim  above  the  mark  to  hit  the  mark.  Every  act 
hath  some  falsehood  of  exaggeration  in  it.  And 
when  now  and  then  comes  along  some  sad,  sharp- 
eyed  man,  who  sees  how  paltry  a  game  is  played, 
and  refuses  to  play  but  blabs  the  secret ;  —  how 
then?  Is  the  bird  flown?  O  no,  the  wary  Na 
ture  sends  a  new  troop  of  fairer  forms,  of  lordlier 
youths,  with  a  little  more  excess  of  direction  to  hold 
them  fast  to  their  several  aim  ;  makes  them  a  little 
wrong-headed  in  that  direction  in  which  they  are 
rightest,  and  on  goes  the  game  again  with  new  whirl, 
for  a  generation  or  two  more.  The  child  with  his 
sweet  pranks,  the  fool  of  his  senses,  commanded  by 
every  sight  and  sound,  without  any  power  to  com 
pare  and  rank  his  sensations,  abandoned  to  a  whistle 
or  a  painted  chip,  to  a  lead  dragoon  or  a  ginger 
bread-dog,  individualizing  everything,  generalizing 
nothing,  delighted  with  every  new  thing,  lies  down 
at  night  overpowered  by  the  fatigue  which  this  day 
of  continual  pretty  madness  has  incurred.  But  Na 
ture  has  answered  her  purpose  with  the  curly,  dim 
pled  lunatic.  She  has  tasked  every  faculty,  and  has 
secured  the  symmetrical  growth  of  the  bodily  frame 
by  all  these  attitudes  and  exertions,  —  an  end  of  the 
first  importance,  which  could  not  be  trusted  to  any 
care  less  perfect  than  her  own.  This  glitter,  this 
opaline  lustre  plays  round  the  top  of  every  toy  to 


NATURE.  179 

fais  eye  to  insure  his  fidelity,  and  he  is  deceived  to 
his  good.  We  are  made  alive  and  kept  alive  by 
the  same  arts.  Let  the  stoics  say  what  they  please, 
we  do  not  eat  for  the  good  of  living,  but  because 
the  meat  is  savory  and  the  appetite  is  keen.  The 
vegetable  life  does  not  content  itself  with  casting 
from  the  flower  or  the  tree  a  single  seed,  but  it  fills 
the  air  and  earth  with  a  prodigality  of  seeds,  that, 
if  thousands  perish,  thousands  may  plant  them 
selves  ;  that  hundreds  may  come  up,  that  tens  may 
live  to  maturity  ;  that  at  least  one  may  replace  the 
parent.  All  things  betray  the  same  calculated  pro 
fusion.  The  excess  of  fear  with  which  the  animal 
frame  is  hedged  round,  shrinking  from  cold,  start 
ing  at  sight  of  a  snake  or  at  a  sudden  noise,  pro 
tects  us,  through  a  multitude  of  groundless  alarms, 
from  some  one  real  danger  at  last.  The  lover  seeks 
in  marriage  his  private  felicity  and  perfection,  with 
no  prospective  end ;  and  nature  hides  in  his  happi 
ness  her  own  end,  namely  progeny,  or  the  perpe 
tuity  of  the  race. 

But  the  craft  with  which  the  world  is  made,  runs 
also  into  the  mind  and  character  of  men.  No  man 
is  quite  sane ;  each  has  a  vein  of  folly  in  his  com 
position,  a  slight  determination  of  blood  to  the  head, 
to  make  sure  of  holding  him  hard  to  some  one  point 
which  nature  had  taken  to  heart.  Great  causes  are 
never  tried  on  their  merits ;  but  the  cause  is  re- 


180  NATURE. 

duced  to  particulars  to  suit  the  size  of  the  partisans, 
and  the  contention  is  ever  hottest  on  minor  matters. 
Not  less  remarkable  is  the  overfaith  of  each  man  in 
the  importance  of  what  he  has  to  do  or  say.  The 
poet,  the  prophet,  has  a  higher  value  for  what  he 
utters  than  any  hearer,  and  therefore  it  gets  spoken. 
The  strong,  self-complacent  Luther  declares  with 
an  emphasis  not  to  be  mistaken,  that  "  God  him 
self  cannot  do  without  wise  men."  Jacob  Behmen 
and  George  Fox  betray  their  egotism  in  the  perti 
nacity  of  their  controversial  tracts,  and  James  Nay- 
lor  once  suffered  himself  to  be  worshipped  as  the 
Christ.  Each  prophet  comes  presently  to  identify 
himself  with  his  thought,  and  to  esteem  his  hat  and 
shoes  sacred.  However  this  may  discredit  such  per 
sons  with  the  judicious,  it  helps  them  with  the  peo 
ple,  as  it  gives  heat,  pungency,  and  publicity  to 
fcheir  words.  A  similar  experience  is  not  infrequent 
in  private  life.  Each  young  and  ardent  person 
writes  a  diary,  in  which,  when  the  hours  of  prayer 
and  penitence  arrive,  he  inscribes  his  soul.  The 
pages  thus  written  are  to  him  burning  and  fragrant ; 
he  reads  them  on  his  knees  by  midnight  and  by  the 
morning  star ;  he  wets  them  with  his  tears ;  the}' 
ure  sacred ;  too  good  for  the  world,  and  hardly  yet 
to  be  shown  to  the  dearest  friend.  This  is  the  man- 
child  that  is  born  to  the  soul,  and  her  life  still  cir- 
eulates  in  the  babe.  The  umbilical  cord  has  not  yet 


'NATURE.  181 

been  cut.  After  some  time  has  elapsed,  he  begins 
to  wish  to  admit  his  friend  to  this  hallowed  experi 
ence,  and  with  hesitation,  yet  with  firmness,  exposes 
the  pages  to  his  eye.  Will  they  not  burn  his  eyes  ? 
The  friend  coldly  turns  them  over,  and  passes  from 
the  writing  to  conversation,  with  easy  transition, 
which  strikes  the  other  party  with  astonishment  and 
vexation.  He  cannot  suspect  the  writing  itself. 
Days  and  nights  of  fervid  life,  of  communion  with 
angels  of  darkness  and  of  light  have  engraved  their 
shadowy  characters  on  that  tear-stained  book.  He 
suspects  the  intelligence  or  the  heart  of  his  friend. 
Is  there  then  no  friend  ?  He  cannot  yet  credit  that 
one  may  have  impressive  experience  and  yet  may 
not  know  how  to  put  his  private  fact  into  literature : 
and  perhaps  the  discovery  that  wisdom  has  other 
tongues  and  ministers  than  we,  that  though  we 
should  hold  our  peace  the  truth  would  not  the  less 
be  spoken,  might  check  injuriously  the  flames  of  our 
zeal.  A  man  can  only  speak  so  long  as  he  does 
not  feel  his  speech  to  be  partial  and  inadequate. 
It  is  partial,  but  he  does  not  see  it  to  be  so  whilst 
he  utters  it.  As  soon  as  he  is  released  from  the 
instinctive  and  particular  and  sees  its  partiality,  he 
shuts  his  mouth  in  disgust.  For  no  man  can  write 
anything  who  does  not  think  that  what  he  writes  is 
for  the  time  the  history  of  the  world ;  or  do  any 
thing  well  who  does  not  esteem  his  work  to  be  of 


182  NATURE. 

importance.  My  work  may  be  of  none,  but  I  must 
not  think  it  of  none,  or  I  shall  not  do  it  with  im 
punity. 

In  like  manner,  there  is  throughout  nature  some 
thing  mocking,  something  that  leads  us  on  and  on, 
but  arrives  nowhere ;  keeps  no  faith  with  us.  All 
promise  outruns  the  performance.  We  live  in  a 
system  of  approximations.  E  /ery  end  is  prospec 
tive  of  some  other  end,  which  is  also  temporary ; 
a  round  and  final  success  nowhere.  We  are  en 
camped  in  nature,  not  domesticated.  Hunger  and 
thirst  lead  us  on  to  eat  and  to  drink ;  but  bread  and 
wine,  mix  and  cook  them  how  you  will,  leave  us 
hungry  and  thirsty,  after  the  stomach  is  full.  It  is 
the  same  with  all  our  arts  and  performances.  Our 
music,  our  poetry,  our  language  itself  are  not  satis 
factions,  but  suggestions.  The  hunger  for  wealth, 
which  reduces  the  planet  to  a  garden,  fools  the 
eager  pursuer.  What  is  the  end  sought?  Plainly 
to  secure  the  ends  of  good  sense  and  beauty  from 
the  intrusion  of  deformity  or  vulgarity  of  any  kind. 
But  what  an  operose  method!  What  a  train  of 
means  to  secure  a  little  conversation  !  This  palace 
of  brick  and  stone,  these  servants,  this  kitchen, 
these  stables,  horses  and  equipage,  this  bank-stock 
and  file  of  mortgages  ;  trade  to  all  the  world,  coun 
try-house  and  cottage  by  the  waterside,  all  for  a 
little  conversation,  high,  clear,  and  spiritual !  Could 


NATURE.  183 

!t  not  be  had  as  well  by  beggars  on  the  high 
way  ?  No,  all  these  things  came  from  successive 
efforts  of  these  beggars  to  remove  friction  from  the 
wheels  of  life,  and  give  opportunity.  Conversa 
tion,  character,  were  the  avowed  ends ;  wealth  was 
good  as  it  appeased  the  animal  cravings,  cured  the 
smoky  chimney,  silenced  the  creaking  door,  brought 
friends  together  in  a  warm  and  quiet  room,  and 
kept  the  children  and  the  dinner-table  in  a  differ 
ent  apartment.  Thought,  virtue,  beauty,  were  the 
ends ;  but  it  was  known  that  men  of  thought  and 
virtue  sometimes  had  the  headache,  or  wet  feet,  or 
could  lose  good  time  whilst  the  room  was  getting 
warm  in  winter  days.  Unluckily,  in  the  exertions 
necessary  to  remove  these  inconveniences,  the  main 
attention  has  been  diverted  to  this  object;  the 
old  aims  have  been  lost  sight  of,  and  to  remove 
friction  has  come  to  be  the  end.  That  is  the  ridi 
cule  of  rich  men  ;  and  Boston,  London,  Vienna,  and 
now  the  governments  generally  of  the  world  are 
cities  and  governments  of  the  rich  ;  and  the  masses 
are  not  men,  but  poor  men,  that  is,  men  who  woidd 
be  rich  ;  this  is  the  ridicule  of  the  class,  that  they 
arrive  with  pains  and  sweat  and  fury  nowhere ; 
when  all  is  done,  it  is  for  nothing.  They  are  like 
one  who  has  interrupted  the  conversation  of  a 
company  to  make  his  speech,  and  now  has  forgot 
ten  what  he  went  to  say.  The  appearance  strikes 


184  NATURE. 

the  eye  everywhere  of  an  aimless  society,  of  aim- 
less  nations.  Were  the  ends  of  nature  so  great 
and  cogent  as  to  exact  this  immense  sacrifice  of 
men? 

Quite  analogous  to  the  deceits  in  life,  there  is, 
as  might  be  expected,  a  similar  effect  on  the  eye 
from  the  face  of  external  nature.  There  is  in 
woods  and  waters  a  certain  enticement  and  flat' 
tery,  together  with  a  failure  to  yield  a  present  sat 
isfaction.  This  disappointment  is  felt  in  every 
landscape.  I  have  seen  the  softness  and  beauty 
of  the  summer  clouds  floating  feathery  overhead, 
enjoying,  as  it  seemed,  their  height  and  privilege 
of  motion,  whilst  yet  they  appeared  not  so  much 
the  drapery  of  this  place  and  hour,  as  forelooking 
to  some  pavilions  and  gardens  of  festivity  beyond. 
It  is  an  odd  jealousy,  but  the  poet  finds  himself 
not  near  enough  to  his  object.  The  pine-tree,  the 
river,  the  bank  of  flowers  before  him  does  not  seem 
to  be  nature.  Nature  is  still  elsewhere.  This  or 
this  is  but  outskirt  and  far-off  reflection  and  echo 
of  the  triumph  that  has  passed  by  and  is  now  at 
its  glancing  splendor  and  heyday,  perchance  in  the 
neighboring  fields,  or,  if  you  stand  in  the  field, 
then  in  the  adjacent  woods.  The  present  object 
shall  give  you  this  sense  of  stillness  that  follows  a 
pageant  which  has  just  gone  by.  What  splendid 
distance,  what  recesses  of  ineffable  pomp  and  love 


NATURE.  185 

liness  in  the  sunset !  But  who  can  go  where  they 
are,  or  lay  his  hand  or  plant  his  foot  thereon? 
Off  they  fall  from  the  round  world  forever  and 
ever.  It  is  the  same  among  the  men  and  women 
as  among  the  silent  trees  ;  always  a  referred  exist 
ence,  an  absence,  never  a  presence  and  satisfac 
tion.  Is  it  that  beauty  can  never  be  grasped  ?  in 
persons  and  in  landscape  is  equally  inaccessible? 
The  accepted  and  betrothed  lover  has  lost  the  wild 
est  charm  of  his  maiden  in  her  acceptance  of  him. 
She  was  heaven  whilst  he  pursued  her  as  a  star  : 
she  cannot  be  heaven  if  she  stoops  to  such  a  one 
as  he. 

What  shall  we  say  of  this  omnipresent  appear 
ance  of  that  first  projectile  impulse,  of  this  flattery 
and  balking  of  so  many  well-meaning  creatures? 
Must  we  not  suppose  somewhere  in  the  universe  a 
slight  treachery  and  derision  ?  Are  we  not  en 
gaged  to  a  serious  resentment  of  this  use  that  is 
made  of  us  ?  Are  we  tickled  trout,  and  fools  of 
nature  ?  One  look  at  the  face  of  heaven  and  earth 
lays  all  petulance  at  rest,  and  soothes  us  to  wiser 
convictions.  To  the  intelligent,  nature  converts  it 
self  into  a  vast  promise,  and  will  not  be  rashly  ex 
plained.  Her  secret  is  untold.  Many  and  many 
an  CEdipus  arrives ;  he  has  the  whole  mystery  teem 
ing  in  his  brain.  Alas  !  the  same  sorcery  has  spoiled 
his  skill ;  no  syllable  can  he  shape  on  his  lips.  Hei 


186  NATURE. 

mighty  orbit  vaults  like  the  fresh  rainbow  into  the 
deep,  but  no  archangel's  wing  was  yet  strong  enough 
to  follow  it  and  report  of  the  return  of  the  curve. 
But  it  also  appears  that  our  actions  are  seconded  and 
disposed  to  greater  conclusions  than  we  designed. 
We  are  escorted  on  every  hand  through  life  by  spir 
itual  agents,  and  a  beneficent  purpose  lies  in  wait 
for  us.  We  cannot  bandy  words  with  Nature,  or 
deal  with  her  as  we  deal  with  persons.  If  we  meas 
ure  our  individual  forces  against  hers  we  may  easily 
feel  as  if  we  were  the  sport  of  an  insuperable  des 
tiny.  But  if,  instead  of  identifying  ourselves  with 
the  work,  we  feel  that  the  soul  of  the  workman 
streams  through  us,  we  shall  find  the  peace  of  the 
morning  dwelling  first  in  our  hearts,  and  the  fath 
omless  powers  of  gravity  and  chemistry,  and,  over 
them,  of  life,  preexisting  within  us  in  their  highest 
form. 

The  uneasiness  which  the  thought  of  our  help 
lessness  in  the  chain  of  causes  occasions  us,  results 
from  looking  too  much  at  one  condition  of  nature, 
namely,  Motion.  But  the  drag  is  never  taken  from 
the  wheel.  Wherever  the  impulse  exceeds,  the  Rest 
or  Identity  insinuates  its  compensation.  All  over 
the  wide  fields  of  earth  grows  the  prunella  or  self- 
heal.  After  every  foolish  day  we  sleep  off  the 
fumes  and  furies  of  its  hours;  and  though  we  are 
always  engaged  with  particulars,  and  often  enslaved 


NATURE.  187 

to  them,  we  bring  with  us  to  every  experiment  the 
innate  universal  laws.  These,  while  they  exist  in 
the  mind  as  ideas,  stand  around  us  in  nature  for 
ever  embodied,  a  present  sanity  to  expose  and  cure 
the  insanity  of  men.  Our  servitude  to  particu 
lars  betrays  us  into  a  hundred  foolish  expectations. 
We  anticipate  a  new  era  from  the  invention  of  a 
locomotive,  or  a  balloon ;  the  new  engine  brings 
with  it  the  old  checks.  They  say  that  by  electro- 
magnetism  your  salad  shall  be  grown  from  the  seed 
whilst  your  fowl  is  roasting  for  dinner ;  it  is  a  sym 
bol  of  our  modern  aims  and  endeavors,  of  our  con 
densation  and  acceleration  of  objects  ;  —  but  noth 
ing  is  gained ;  nature  cannot  be  cheated ;  man's  life 
is  but  seventy  salads  long,  grow  they  swift  or  grow 
they  slow.  In  these  checks  and  impossibilities  how 
ever  we  find  our  advantage,  not  less  than  in  the  im 
pulses.  Let  the  victory  fall  where  it  will,  we  are 
on  that  side.  And  the  knowledge  that  we  traverse 
the  whole  scale  of  being,  from  the  centre  to  the 
poles  of  nature,  and  have  some  stake  in  every  possi 
bility,  lends  that  sublime  lustre  to  death,  which 
philosophy  and  religion  have  too  outwardly  and  lit 
erally  striven  to  express  in  the  popular  doctrine  of 
the  immortality  of  the  soul.  The  reality  is  more 
excellent  than  the  report.  Here  is  no  ruin,  no  dis 
continuity,  no  spent  ball.  The  divine  circulations 
Uever  rest  nor  linger.  Nature  is  the  incarnation  of 


188  NATURE. 

a  thought,  and  turns  to  a  thought  again,  as  ice  be 
comes  water  and  gas.  The  world  is  mind  precipi 
tated,  and  the  volatile  essence  is  forever  escaping 
again  into  the  state  of  free  thought.  Hence  the  vir 
tue  and  pungency  of  the  influence  on  the  mind 
of  natural  objects,  whether  inorganic  or  organized. 
Man  imprisoned,  man  crystallized,  man  vegetative, 
speaks  to  man  impersonated.  That  power  which 
does  not  respect  quantity,  which  makes  the  whole 
and  the  particle  its  equal  channel,  delegates  its  smile 
to  the  morning,  and  distils  its  essence  into  every 
drop  of  rain.  Every  moment  instructs,  and  every 
object ,  for  wisdom  is  infused  into  every  form.  It 
has  been  poured  into  us  as  blood ;  it  convulsed  us 
as  pain ;  it  slid  into  us  as  pleasure  ;  it  enveloped  us 
in  dull,  melancholy  days,  or  in  days  of  cheerful  la 
bor  ;  we  did  not  guess  its  essence  until  after  a  long 
time. 


POLITICS. 


Gold  and  iron  are  good 

To  buy  iron  and  gold ; 

All  earth's  fleece  and  food 

For  their  like  are  sold. 

Boded  Merlin  wise, 

Proved  Napoleon  great,  — 

Nor  kind  nor  coinage  buys 

Aught  above  its  rate. 

Fear,  Craft,  and  Avarice 

Cannot  rear  a  State. 

Out  of  dust  to  build 

What  is  more  than  dust,  — • 

Walls  Amphion  piled 

Phoebus  stablish  must. 

When  the  Muses  nine 

With  the  Virtues  meet, 

Find  to  their  design 

An  Atlantic  seat, 

By  green  orchard  boughs 

Fended  from  the  heat, 

Where  the  statesman  ploughs 

Furrow  for  the  wheat ; 

When  the  Church  is  social  worth, 

When  the  state-house  is  the  hearth, 

Then  the  perfect  State  is  come, 

The  republican  at  home. 


VIL 

POLITICS. 


IN  dealing  with  the  State  we  ought  to  remember 
that  its  institutions  are  not  aboriginal,  though  they 
existed  before  we  were  born  ;  that  they  are  not  su 
perior  to  the  citizen  ;  that  every  one  of  them  was 
once  the  act  of  a  single  man ;  every  law  and  usage 
was  a  man's  expedient  to  meet  a  particular  case  ; 
that  they  all  are  imitable,  all  alterable  ;  we  may 
make  as  good,  we  may  make  better.  Society  is  an 
illusion  to  the  young  citizen.  It  lies  before  him  in 
rigid  repose,  with  certain  names,  men  and  institu 
tions  rooted  like  oak-trees  to  the  centre,  round 
which  all  arrange  themselves  the  best  they  can. 
But  the  old  statesman  knows  that  society  is  fluid  ; 
there  are  no  such  roots  and  centres,  but  any  parti 
cle  may  suddenly  become  the  centre  of  the  move 
ment  and  compel  the  system  to  gyrate  round  it ;  as 
every  man  of  strong  will,  like  Pisistratus  or  Crom 
well,  does  for  a  time,  and  every  man  of  truth,  like 
Plato  or  Paul,  does  forever.  But  politics  rest  on 
necessary  foundations,  and  cannot  be  treated  with 


192  POLITICS. 

levity.  Republics  abound  in  young  civilians  who 
believe  that  the  laws  make  the  city,  that  grave 
modifications  of  the  policy  and  modes  of  living  and 
employments  of  the  population,  that  commerce,  ed 
ucation,  and  religion,  may  be  voted  in  or  out ;  and 
that  any  measure,  though  it  were  absurd,  may  be 
imposed  on  a  people  if  only  you  can  get  sufficient 
voices  to  make  it  a  law.  But  the  wise  know  that 
foolish  legislation  is  a  rope  of  sand  which  perishes 
in  the  twisting ;  that  the  State  must  follow  and 
not  lead  the  character  and  progress  of  the  citizen  ; 
the  strongest  usurper  is  quickly  got  rid  of  ;  and 
they  only  who  build  on  Ideas,  build  for  eternity ; 
and  that  the  form  of  government  which  prevails  is 
the  expression  of  what  cultivation  exists  in  the  pop 
ulation  which  permits  it.  The  law  is  only  a  mem 
orandum.  We  are  superstitious,  and  esteem  the 
statute  somewhat:  so  much  life  as  it  has  in  the 
character  of  living  men  is  its  force.  The  statute 
stands  there  to  say,  Yesterday  we  agreed  so  and  so, 
but  how  feel  ye  this  article  to-day  ?  Our  statute 
is  a  currency  which  we  stamp  with  our  own  por 
trait  :  it  soon  becomes  unrecognizable,  and  in  pro 
cess  of  time  will  return  to  the  mint.  Nature  is  not 
democratic,  nor  limited-monarchical,  but  despotic, 
and  will  not  be  fooled  or  abated  of  any  jot  of  her 
authority  by  the  pertest  of  her  sons  ;  and  as  fast  as 
the  public  mind  is  opened  to  more  intelligence,  the 


POLITICS.  193 

code  is  seen  to  be  brute  and  stammering.  It  speaks 
not  articulately,  and  must  be  made  to.  Meantime 
tlie  education  of  the  general  mind  never  stops. 
The  reveries  of  the  true  and  simple  are  prophetic. 
What  the  tender  poetic  youth  dreams,  and  prays, 
and  paints  to-day,  but  shuns  the  ridicule  of  saying 
aloud,  shall  presently  be  the  resolutions  of  public 
bodies  ;  then  shall  be  carried  as  grievance  and  bill 
of  rights  through  conflict  and  war,  and  then  shall 
be  triumphant  law  and  establishment  for  a  hun 
dred  years,  until  it  gives  place  in  turn  to  new  pray 
ers  and  pictures.  The  history  of  the  State  sketches 
in  coarse  outline  the  progress  of  thought,  and  fol 
lows  at  a  distance  the  delicacy  of  culture  and  of  as 
piration. 

The  theory  of  politics  which  has  possessed  the 
mind  of  men,  and  which  they  have  expressed  the 
best  they  could  in  their  laws  and  in  their  revolu 
tions,  considers  persons  and  property  as  the  two  ob 
jects  for  whose  protection  government  exists.  Of 
persons,  all  have  equal  rights,  in  virtue  of  being 
identical  in  nature.  This  interest  of  course  with 
its  whole  power  demands  a  democracy.  Whilst  the 
rights  of  all  as  persons  are  equal,  in  virtue  of  their 
access  to  reason,  their  rights  in  property  are  very 
unequal.  One  man  owns  his  clothes,  and  another 
owns  a  county.  This  accident,  depending  primari 
ly  on  the  skill  and  virtue  of  the  parties,  of  which 

VOL.    III.  13 


194  POLITICS. 

there  is  every  degree,  and  secondarily  on  patrimo* 
ny,  falls  unequally,  and  its  rights  of  course  are 
unequal.  Personal  rights,  universally  the  same, 
demand  a  government  framed  on  the  ratio  of  the 
census  ;  property  demands  a  government  framed 
on  the  ratio  of  owners  and  of  owning.  Laban,  who 
has  flocks  and  herds,  wishes  them  looked  after  by 
an  officer  on  the  frontiers,  lest  the  Midianites  shall 
drive  them  off  ;  and  pays  a  tax  to  that  end.  Jacob 
has  no  flocks  or  herds  and  no  fear  of  the  Midian 
ites,  and  pays  no  tax  to  the  officer.  It  seemed  fit 
that  Laban  and  Jacob  should  have  equal  rights  to 
elect  the  officer  who  is  to  defend  their  persons,  but 
that  Laban  and  not  Jacob  should  elect  the  officer 
who  is  to  guard  the  sheep  and  cattle.  And  if  ques 
tion  arise  whether  additional  officers  or  watch-tow 
ers  should  be  provided,  must  not  Laban  and  Isaac, 
and  those  who  must  sell  part  of  their  herds  to  buy 
protection  for  the  rest,  judge  better  of  this,  and  with 
more  right,  than  Jacob,  who,  because  he  is  a  youth 
and  a  traveller,  eats  their  bread  and  not  his  own  ? 

In  the  earliest  society  the  proprietors  made  their 
own  wealth,  and  so  long  as  it  comes  to  the  owners 
in  the  direct  way,  no  other  opinion  would  arise  in 
any  equitable  community  than  that  property  should 
make  the  law  for  property,  and  persons  the  law  foi 
persons. 

But  property  passes  through  donation  or  inherit* 


POLITICS.  195 

ance  to  those  who  do  not  create  it.  Gift,  in  one 
case,  makes  it  as  really  the  new  owner's,  as  labor 
made  it  the  first  owner's :  in  the  other  case,  of  pat 
rimony,  the  law  makes  an  ownership  which  will  be 
valid  in  each  man's  view  according  to  the  estimate 
which  he  sets  on  the  public  tranquillity. 

It  was  not  however  found  easy  to  embody  the 
readily  admitted  principle  that  property  should 
make  law  for  property,  and  persons  for  persons ; 
since  persons  and  property  mixed  themselves  in 
every  transaction.  At  last  it  seemed  settled  that 
the  rightful  distinction  was  that  the  proprietors 
should  have  more  elective  franchise  than  non-pro 
prietors,  on  the  Spartan  principle  of  "  calling  that 
which  is  just,  equal ;  not  that  which  is  equal,  just." 

That  principle  no  longer  looks  so  self-evident  as 
it  appeared  in  former  times,  partly  because  doubts 
have  arisen  whether  too  much  weight  had  not  been 
allowed  in  the  laws  to  property,  and  such  a  struc 
ture  given  to  our  usages  as  allowed  the  rich  to  en 
croach  on  the  poor,  and  to  keep  them  poor ;  but 
mainly  because  there  is  an  instinctive  sense,  how 
ever  obscure  and  yet  inarticulate,  that  the  whole 
constitution  of  property,  on  its  present  tenures,  is 
njurious,  and  its  influence  on  persons  deteriorating1 
and  degrading  ;  that  truly  the  only  interest  for  the 
consideration  of  the  State  is  persons ;  that  property 
will  always  follow  persons  ;  that  the  highest  end  of 


196  POLITICS. 

government  is  the  culture  of  men  ;  and  that  if  men 
can  be  educated,  the  institutions  will  share  their 
improvement  and  the  moral  sentiment  will  write 
the  law  of  the  land. 

If  it  be  not  easy  to  settle  the  equity  of  this  ques- 
tion,  the  peril  is  less  when  we  take  note  of  our  nat 
ural  defences.  We  are  kept  by  better  guards  than 
the  vigilance  of  such  magistrates  as  we  commonly 
elect.  Society  always  consists  in  greatest  part  of 
young  and  foolish  persons.  The  old,  who  have 
seen  through  the  hypocrisy  of  courts  and  statesmen, 
die  and  leave  no  wisdom  to  their  sons.  They  be 
lieve  their  own  newspaper,  as  their  fathers  did  at 
their  age.  With  such  an  ignorant  and  deceivable 
majority,  States  would  soon  run  to  ruin,  but  that 
there  are  limitations  beyond  which  the  folly  and 
ambition  of  governors  cannot  go.  Things  have  their 
laws,  as  well  as  men  ;  and  things  refuse  to  be  trifled 
with.  Property  will  be  protected.  Corn  will  not 
grow  unless  it  is  planted  and  manured  ;  but  the 
farmer  will  not  plant  or  hoe  it  unless  the  chances 
are  a  hundred  to  one  that  he  will  cut  and  harvest 
it.  Under  any  forms,  persons  and  property  must 
and  will  have  their  just  sway.  They  exert  their 
power,  as  steadily  as  matter  its  attraction.  Cover 
up  a  pound  of  earth  never  so  cunningly,  divide  and 
subdivide  it ;  melt  it  to  liquid,  convert  it  to  gas  ;  it 
will  always  weigh  a  pound;  it  will  always  attract 


POLITICS.  197 

and  resist  other  matter  by  the  full  virtue  of  one 
pound  weight :  —  and  the  attributes  of  a  person,  his 
wit  and  his  moral  energy,  will  exercise,  under  any 
law  or  extinguishing  tyranny,  their  proper  force, 
—  if  not  overtly,  then  covertly  ;  if  not  for  the  law, 
then  against  it ;  if  not  wholesomely,  then  poison- 
ously  ;  with  right,  or  by  might. 

The  boundaries  of  personal  influence  it  is  impos 
sible  to  fix,  as  persons  are  organs  of  moral  or  super 
natural  force.  Under  the  dominion  of  an  idea 
which  possesses  the  minds  of  multitudes,  as  civil 
freedom,  or  the  religious  sentiment,  the  powers  of 
persons  are  no  longer  subjects  of  calculation.  A 
nation  of  men  unanimously  bent  on  freedom  or  con 
quest  can  easily  confound  the  arithmetic  of  statists, 
and  achieve  extravagant  actions,  out  of  all  propor 
tion  to  their  means  ;  as  the  Greeks,  the"  Saracens, 
the  Swiss,  the  Americans,  and  the  French  have 
done. 

In  like  manner  to  every  particle  of  property  be 
longs  its  own  attraction.  A  cent  is  the  representa 
tive  of  a  certain  quantity  of  corn  or  other  commod 
ity.  Its  value  is  in  the  necessities  of  the  animal 
man.  It  is  so  much  warmth,  so  much  bread,  so 
much  water,  so  much  land.  The  law  may  do  what 
it  will  with  the  owner  of  property  ;  its  just  power 
will  still  attach  to  the  cent.  The  law  may  in  a 
mad  freak  say  that  all  shall  have  power  except  the 


198  POLITICS. 

owners  of  property ;  they  shall  have  no  vote. 
Nevertheless,  by  a  higher  law,  the  property  will, 
year  after  year,  write  every  statute  that  respects 
property.  The  non-proprietor  will  be  the  scribe 
of  the  proprietor.  What  the  owners  wish  to  do, 
the  whole  power  of  property  will  do,  either  through 
the  law  or  else  in  defiance  of  it.  Of  course  I  speak 
of  all  the  property,  not  merely  of  the  great  estates. 
When  the  rich  are  outvoted,  as  frequently  happens, 
it  is  the  joint  treasury  of  the  poor  which  exceeds 
their  accumulations.  Every  man  owns  something, 
if  it  is  only  a  cow,  or  a  wheel-barrow,  or  his  arms, 
and  so  has  that  property  to  dispose  of. 

The  same  necessity  which  secures  the  rights  of 
person  and  property  against  the  malignity  or  folly 
of  the  magistrate,  determines  the  form  and  meth 
ods  of  governing,  which  are  proper  to  each  nation 
and  to  its  habit  of  thought,  and  nowise  transferable 
to  other  states  of  society.  In  this  country  we  are 
very  vain  of  our  political  institutions,  which  are 
singular  in  this,  that  they  sprung,  within  the  mem 
ory  of  living  men,  from  the  character  and  condition 
of  the  people,  which  they  still  express  with  suffi 
cient  fidelity,  —  and  we  ostentatiously  prefer  them 
to  any  other  in  history.  They  are  not  better,  but 
only  fitter  for  us.  We  may  be  wise  in  asserting 
the  advantage  in  modern  times  of  the  democratic 
form,  but  to  other  states  of  society,  in  which  relig- 


POLITICS.  199 

ion  consecrated  the  monarchical,  that  and  not  this 
was  expedient.  Democracy  is  better  for  us,  be 
cause  the  religious  sentiment  of  the  present  time 
accords  better  with  it.  Born  democrats,  we  are  no 
wise  qualified  to  judge  of  monarchy,  which,  to  our 
fathers  living  in  the  monarchical  idea,  was  also  rel 
atively  right.  But  our  institutions,  though  in  coin 
cidence  with  the  spirit  of  the  age,  have  not  any 
exemption  from  the  practical  defects  which  have 
discredited  other  forms.  Every  actual  State  is 
corrupt.  Good  men  must  not  obey  the  laws  too 
well.  What  satire  on  government  can  equal  the 
severity  of  censure  conveyed  in  the  word  politic, 
which  now  for  ages  has  signified  cunning,  intimat 
ing  that  the  State  is  a  trick  ? 

The  same  benign  necessity  and  the  same  practi 
cal  abuse  appear  in  the  parties,  into  which  each 
State  divides  itself,  of  opponents  and  defenders  of 
the  administration  of  the  government.  Parties  are 
also  founded  on  instincts,  and  have  better  guides  to 
their  own  humble  aims  than  the  sagacity  of  their 
leaders.  They  have  nothing  perverse  in  their  ori 
gin,  but  rudely  mark  some  real  and  lasting  relation. 
We  might  as  wisely  reprove  the  east  wind  or  the 
frost,  as  a  political  party,  whose  members,  for  the 
most  part,  could  give  no  account  of  their  position, 
but  stand  for  the  defence  of  those  interests  in 
which  they  find  themselves.  Our  quarrel  with 


209  POLITICS. 

them  begins  when  they  quit  this  deep  natural 
ground  at  the  bidding  of  some  leader,  and  obeying 
personal  considerations,  throw  themselves  into  the 
maintenance  and  defence  of  points  nowise  belong 
ing  to  their  system.  A  party  is  perpetually  cor 
rupted  by  personality.  Whilst  we  absolve  the  as 
sociation  from  dishonesty,  we  cannot  extend  the 
same  charity  to  their  leaders.  They  reap  the  re 
wards  of  the  docility  and  zeal  of  the  masses  which 
they  direct.  Ordinarily  our  parties  are  parties  of 
circumstance,  and  not  of  principle ;  as  the  planting 
interest  in  conflict  with  the  commercial ;  the  party 
of  capitalists  and  that  of  operatives :  parties  which 
are  identical  in  their  moral  character,  and  which 
can  easily  change  ground  with  each  other  in  the 
support  of  many  of  their  measures.  Parties  of 
principle,  as,  religious  sects,  or  the  party  of  free- 
trade,  of  universal  suffrage,  of  abolition  of  slavery, 
of  abolition  of  capital  punishment,  —  degenerate 
into  personalities,  or  would  inspire  enthusiasm. 
The  vice  of  our  leading  parties  in  this  country 
(which  may  be  cited  as  a  fair  specimen  of  these  so 
cieties  of  opinion)  is  that  they  do  not  plant  them 
selves  on  the  deep  and  necessary  grounds  to  which 
they  are  respectively  entitled,  but  lash  themselves 
to  fury  in  the  carrying  of  some  local  and  momen 
tary  measure,  nowise  useful  to  the  commonwealth. 
Of  the  two  great  parties  which  at  this  hour  almost 


POLITICS.  201 

share  the  nation  l^etween  them,  I  should  say  that 
one  has  the  best  cause,  and  the  other  contains  the 
best  men.  The  philosopher,  the  poet,  or  the  relig 
ious  man .  will  of  course  wish  to  cast  his  vote  with 
the  democrat,  for  free -trade,  for  wide  suffrage,  for 
the  abolition  of  legal  cruelties  in  the  penal  code, 
and  for  facilitating  in  every  manner  the  access  of 
the  young  and  the  poor  to  the  sources  of  wealth 
and  power.  But  he  can  rarely  accept  the  persons 
whom  the  so-called  popular  party  propose  to  him 
as  representatives  of  these  liberalities.  They  have 
not  at  heart  the  ends  which  give  to  the  name  of 
democracy  what  hope  and  virtue  are  in  it.  The 
spirit  of  our  American  radicalism  is  destructive 
and  aimless :  it  is  not  loving ;  it  has  no  ulterior  and 
divine  ends,  but  is  destructive  only  out  of  hatred 
and  selfishness.  On  the  other  side,  the  conserva 
tive  party,  composed  of  the  most  moderate,  able, 
and  cultivated  part  of  the  population,  is  timid,  and 
merely  defensive  of  property.  It  vindicates  no 
right,  it  aspires  to  no  real  good,  it  brands  no  crime, 
it  proposes  no  generous  policy ;  it  does  not  build, 
nor  write,  nor  cherish  the  arts,  nor  foster  religion, 
nor  establish  schools,  nor  encourage  science,  nor 
emancipate  the  slave,  nor  befriend  the  poor,  or  the 
Indian,  or  the  immigrant.  From  neither  party, 
when  in  power,  has  the  world  any  benefit  to  expect 
in  science,  art,  or  humanity,  at  all  commensurate 
with  the  resources  of  the  nation. 


202       '  POLITICS. 

I  do  not  for  these  defects  despair  of  our  republic. 
We  are  not  at  the  mercy  of  any  waves  of  chance. 
In  the  strife  of  ferocious  parties,  human  nature  al 
ways  finds-  itself  cherished ;  as  the  children  of  the 
convicts  at  Botany  Bay  are  found  to  have  as  healthy 
a  moral  sentiment  as  other  children.  Citizens  of 
feudal  states  are  alarmed  at  our  democratic  institu 
tions  lapsing  into  anarchy,  and  the  older  and  more 
cautious  among  ourselves  are  learning  from  Euro 
peans  to  look  with  some  terror  at  our  turbulent 
freedom.  It  is  said  that  in  our  license  of  constru 
ing  the  Constitution,  and  in  the  despotism  of  pub 
lic  opinion,  we  have  no  anchor ;  and  one  foreign 
observer  thinks  he  has  found  the  safeguard  in  the 
sanctity  of  Marriage  among  us ;  and  another  thinks 
he  has  found  it  in  our  Calvinism.  Fisher  Ames 
expressed  the  popular  security  more  wisely,  when 
he  compared  a  monarchy  and  a  republic,  saying 
that  a  monarchy  is  a  merchantman,  which  sails  well, 
but  will  sometimes  strike  on  a  rock  and  go  to  the 
bottom  ;  whilst  a  republic  is  a  raft,  which  would 
never  sink,  but  then  your  feet  are  always  in  water. 
No  forms  can  have  any  dangerous  importance  whilst 
we  are  befriended  by  the  laws  of  things.  It  makes 
no  difference  how  many  tons  weight  of  atmosphere 
presses  on  pur  heads,  so  long  as  the  same  pressure 
resists  it  within  the  lungs.  Augment  the  mass  a 
thousand  fold,  it  cannot  begin  to  crush  us,  as  long 


POLITICS.  203 

as  reaction  is  equal  to  action.  The  fact  of  two 
poles,  of  two  forces,  centripetal  and  centrifugal,  is 
universal,  and  each  force  by  its  own  activity  devel 
ops  the  other.  Wild  liberty  develops  iron  con 
science.  Want  of  liberty,  by  strengthening  law 
and  decorum,  stupefies  conscience.  '  Lynch  law  ' 
prevails  only  where  there  is  greater  hardihood  and 
self-subsistency  in  the  leaders.  A  mob  cannot  be 
a  permanency ;  everybody's  interest  requires  that 
it  should  not  exist,  and  only  justice  satisfies  all. 

We  must  trust  infinitely  to  the  beneficent  neces 
sity  which  shines  through  all  laws.  Human  nature 
expresses  itself  in  them  as  characteristically  as  in 
statues,  or  songs,  or  railroads ;  and  an  abstract  of 
the  codes  of  nations  would  be  a  transcript  of  the 
common  conscience.  Governments  have  their  ori 
gin  in  the  moral  identity  of  men.  Eeason  for  one 
is  seen  to  be  reason  for  another,  and  for  every  other. 
There  is  a  middle  measure  which  satisfies  all  par 
ties,  be  they  never  so  many  or  so  resolute  for  their 
own.  Every  man  finds  a  sanction  for  his  simplest 
claims  and  deeds,  in  decisions  of  his  own  mind, 
which  he  calls  Truth  and  Holiness.  In  these  de 
cisions  all  the  citizens  find  a  perfect  agreement,  and 
only  in  these ;  not  in  what  is  good  to  eat,  good  to 
wear,  good  use  of  time,  or  what  amount  of  land  or 
of  public  aid  each  is  entitled  to  claim.  This  truth 
and  justice  men  presently  endeavor  to  make  appli« 


204  POLITICS. 

cation  of  to  the  measuring  of  land,  the  apportion, 
ment  of  service,  the  protection  of  life  and  property. 
Their  first  endeavors,  no  doubt,  are  very  awkward. 
Yet  absolute  right  is  the  first  governor  ;  or,  every 
government  is  an  impure  theocracy.  The  idea 
after  which  each  community  is  aiming  to  make  and 
mend  its  law,  is  the  will  of  the  wise  man.  The 
wise  man  it  cannot  find  in  nature,  and  it  makes  awk 
ward  but  earnest  efforts  to  secure  his  government 
by  contrivance ;  as  by  causing  the  entire  people  to 
give  their  voices  on  every  measure ;  or  by  a  double 
choice  to  get  the  representation  of  the  whole  ;  or 
by  a  selection  of  the  best  citizens  ;  or  to  secure  the 
advantages  of  efficiency  and  internal  peace  by  con 
fiding  the  government  to  one,  who  may  himself 
select  his  agents.  All  forms  of  government  sym 
bolize  an  immortal  government,  common  to  all  dy 
nasties  and  independent  of  numbers,  perfect  where 
two  men  exist,  perfect  where  there  is  only  one 
man. 

Every  man's  nature  is  a  sufficient  advertisement 
to  him  of  the  character  of  his  fellows.  My  right 
and  my  wrong  is  their  right  and  their  wrong. 
Whilst  I  do  what  is  fit  for  me,  and  abstain  from 
what  is  unfit,  my  neighbor  and  I  shall  often  agree 
in  our  means,  and  work  together  for  a  time  to  one 
end.  But  whenever  I  find  my  dominion  over  my 
self  not  sufficient  for  me,  and  undertake  the  direo. 


POLITICS.  205 

tion  of  him  also,  I  overstep  the  truth,  and  come 
into  false  relations  to  him.  I  may  have  so  much 
more  skill  or  strength  than  he  that  he  cannot  ex 
press  adequately  his  sense  of  wrong,  but  it  is  a  lie, 
and  hurts  like  a  lie  both  him  and  me.  Love  and. 
nature  cannot  maintain  the  assumption  ;  it  must  be 
executed  by  a  practical  lie,  namely  by  force.  This 
undertaking  for  another  is  the  blunder  which  stands 
in  colossal  ugliness  in  the  governments  of  the  world. 
It  is  the  same  thing  in  numbers,  as  in  a  pair,  only 
not  quite  so  intelligible.  I  can  see  well  enough  a 
great  difference  between  my  setting  myself  down  to 
a  self-control,  and  my  going  to  make  somebody  else 
act  after  my  views ;  but  when  a  quarter  of  the 
human  race  assume  to  tell  me  what  I  must  do,  I 
may  be  too  much  disturbed  by  the  circumstances 
to  see  so  clearly  the  absurdity  of  their  command. 
Therefore  all  public  ends  look  vague  and  quixotic 
beside  private  ones.  For  any  laws  but  those  which 
men  make  for  themselves,  are  laughable.  If  I  put 
myself  in  the  place  of  my  child,  and  we  stand  in 
one  thought  and  see  that  things  are  thus  or  thus, 
that  perception  is  law  for  him  and  me.  We  are 
both  there,  both  act.  But  if,  without  carrying  him 
into  the  thought,  I  look  over  into  his  plot,  and,  guess 
ing  how  it  is  with  him,  ordain  this  or  that,  he  will 
Uever  obey  me.  This  is  the  history  of  governments, 
—one  man  does  something  which  is  to  bind  an* 


206  POLITICS. 

other.  A  man  who  cannot  be  acquainted  with  me, 
taxes  me ;  looking  from  afar  at  me  ordains  that  a 
part  of  my  labor  shall  go  to  this  or  that  whimsical 
end,  —  not  as  I,  but  as  he  happens  to  fancy.  Be 
hold  the  consequence.  Of  all  debts  men  are  least 
willing  to  pay  the  taxes.  What  a  satire  is  this  on 
government !  Everywhere  they  think  they  get 
their  money's  worth,  except  for  these. 

Hence  the  less  government  we  have  the  better, 
—  the  fewer  laws,  and  the  less  confided  power. 
The  antidote  to  this  abuse  of  formal  Government 
is  the  influence  of  private  character,  the  growth  of 
the  Individual ;  the  appearance  of  the  principal  to 
.supersede  the  proxy  ;  the  appearance  of  the  wise 
man ;  of  whom  the  existing  government  is,  it  must 
be  owned,  but  a  shabby  imitation.  That  which  all 
things  tend  to  educe ;  which  freedom,  cultivation, 
intercourse,  revolutions,  go  to  form  and  deliver,  is 
character  ;  that  is  the  end  of  Nature,  to  reach  unto 
this  coronation  of  her  king.  To  educate  the  wise 
man  the  State  exists,  and  with  the  appearance  of 
the  wise  man  the  State  expires.  The  appearance 
of  character  makes  the  State  unnecessary.  The 
wise  man  is  the  State.  He  needs  no  army,  fort,  or 
navy,  —  he  loves  men  too  well ;  no  bribe,  or  feast, 
or  palace,  to  draw  friends  to  him ;  no  vantage 
ground,  no  favorable  circumstance.  He  needs  no 
library,  for  he  has  not  done  thinking ;  no  church, 


POLITICS.  207 

for  he  is  a  prophet ;  no  statute  book,  for  he  has  the 
lawgiver ;  no  money,  for  he  is  value  ;  no  road,  for 
he  is  at  home  where  he  is  ;  no  experience,  for  the 
life  of  the  creator  shoots  through  him,  and  looks 
from  his  eyes.  He  has  no  personal  friends,  for  he 
who  has  the  spell  to  draw  the  prayer  and  piety  of 
all  men  unto  him  needs  not  husband  and  educate 
a  few  to  share  with  him  a  select  and  poetic  life. 
His  relation  to  men  is  angelic  ;  his  memory  is 
myrrh  to  them;  his  presence,  frankincense  and 
flowers. 

We  think  our  civilization  near  its  meridian,  but 
we  are  yet  only  at  the  cock-crowing  and  the  morn 
ing  star.  In  our  barbarous  society  the  influence  of 
character  is  in  its  infancy.  As  a  political  power,  as 
the  rightful  lord  who  is  to  tumble  all  rulers  from 
their  chairs,  its  presence  is  hardly  yet  suspected. 
Malthus  and  Bicardo  quite  omit  it ;  the  Annual 
Register  is  silent ;  in  the  Conversations'  Lexicon 
it  is  not  set  down  ;  the  President's  Message,  the 
Queen's  Speech,  have  not  mentioned  it ;  and  yet 
it  is  never  nothing.  Every  thought  which  genius 
and  piety  throw  into  the  world,  alters  the  world. 
The  gladiators  in  the  lists  of  power  feel,  through 
all  their  frocks  of  force  and  simulation,  the  pres 
ence  of  worth.  I  think  the  very  strife  of  trade  and 
ambition  is  confession  of  this  divinity ;  and  suc 
cesses  in  those  fields  are  the  poor  amends,  the  fig- 


208  POLITICS. 

leaf  with  which  the  shamed  soul  attempts  to  hide 
its  nakedness.  I  find  the  like  unwilling  homage  in 
all  quarters.  It  is  because  we  know  how  much  is 
due  from  us  that  we  are  impatient  to  show  some 
petty  talent  as  a  substitute  for  worth.  We  are 
haunted  by  a  conscience  of  this  right  to  grandeur 
of  character,  and  are  false  to  it.  But  each  of  us 
has  some  talent,  can  do  somewhat  useful,  or  grace 
ful,  or  formidable,  or  amusing,  or  lucrative.  That 
we  do,  as  an  apology  to  others  and  to  ourselves  for 
not  reaching  the  mark  of  a  good  and  equal  life. 
But  it  does  not  satisfy  us,  whilst  we  thrust  it  on 
the  notice  of  our  companions.  It  may  throw  dust 
in  their  eyes,  but  does  not  smooth  our  own  brow, 
or  give  us  the  tranquillity  of  the  strong  when  we 
walk  abroad.  We  do  penance  as  we  go.  Our  tal 
ent  is  a  sort  of  expiation,  and  we  are  constrained 
to  reflect  on  our  splendid  moment  with  a  certain 
humiliation,  as  somewhat  too  fine,  and  not  as  one 
act  of  many  acts,  a  fair  expression  of  our  perma 
nent  energy.  Most  persons  of  ability  meet  in  so 
ciety  with  a  kind  of  tacit  appeal.  Each  seems  to 
say,  '  I  am  not  all  here.'  Senators  and  presidents 
have  climbed  so  high  with  pain  enough,  not  be 
cause  they  think  the  place  specially  agreeable,  but 
as  an  apology  for  real  worth,  and  to  vindicate  their 
manhood  in  our  eyes.  This  conspicuous  chair  is 
their  compensation  to  themselves  for  being  of  9 


POLITICS.  209 

poor,  cold,  hard  nature.  They  must  do  what  they 
can.  Like  one  class  of  forest  animals,  they  have 
nothing  but  a  prehensile  tail ;  climb  they  must,  01? 
crawl.  If  a  man  found  himself  so  rich-natured 
that  he  could  enter  into  strict  relations  with  the 
best  persons  and  make  life  serene  around  him  by 
the  dignity  and  sweetness  of  his  behavior,  could  he 
afford  to  circumvent  the  favor  of  the  caucus  and 
the  press,  and  covet  relations  so  hollow  and  pom 
pous  as  those  of  a  politician  ?  Surely  nobody  would 
be  a  charlatan  who  could  afford  to  be  sincere. 

The  tendencies  of  the  times  favor  the  idea  of  self- 
government,  and  leave  the  individual,  for  all  code, 
to  the  rewards  and  penalties  of  his  own  constitu 
tion  ;  which  work  with  more  energy  than  we  be 
lieve  whilst  we  depend  on  artificial  restraints.  The 
movement  in  this  direction  has  been  very  marked 
in  modern  history.  Much  has  been  blind  and  dis 
creditable,  but  the  nature  of  the  revolution  is  not 
affected  by  the  vices  of  the  revolters ;  for  this  is 
a  purely  moral  force.  It  was  never  adopted  by 
any  party  in  history,  neither  can  be.  It  separates 
the  individual  from  all  party,  and  unites  him  at  the 
same  time  to  the  race.  It  promises  a  recognition 
of  higher  rights  than  those  of  personal  freedom,  or 
the  security  of  property.  A  man  has  a  right  to  be 
employed,  to  be  trusted,  to  be  loved,  to  be  revered. 
The  power  of  love,  as  the  basis  of  a  State,  has  never 

YOU  III.  14 


210  POLITICS. 

been  tried.  We  must  not  imagine  that  all  things 
are  lapsing  into  confusion  if  every  tender  protest- 
ant  be  not  compelled  to  bear  his  part  in  certain 
social  conventions ;  nor  doubt  that  roads  can  be 
built,  letters  carried,  and  the  fruit  of  labor  secured, 
when  the  government  of  force  is  at  an  end.  Are 
our  methods  now  so  excellent  that  all  competition  is 
hopeless  ?  could  not  a  nation  of  friends  even  devise 
better  ways  ?  On  the  other  hand,  let  not  the  most 
conservative  and  timid  fear  anything  from  a  pre 
mature  surrender  of  the  bayonet  and  the  system  of 
force.  For,  according  to  the  order  of  nature,  which 
is  quite  superior  to  our  will,  it  stands  thus  ;  there 
will  always  be  a  government  of  force  where  men 
are  selfish  ;  and  when  they  are  pure  enough  to  ab 
jure  the  code  of  force  they  will  be  wise  enough  to 
see  how  these  public  ends  of  the  post-office,  of  the 
highway,  of  commerce  and  the  exchange  of  prop 
erty,  of  museums  and  libraries,  of  institutions  of 
art  and  science  can  be  answered. 

We  live  in  a  very  low  state  of  the  world,  and 
pay  unwilling  tribute  to  governments  founded  on 
force.  There  is  not,  among  the  most  religious  and 
instructed  men  of  the  most  religious  and  civil  na 
tions,  a  reliance  on  the  moral  sentiment  and  a  suf 
ficient  belief  in  the  unity  of  things,  to  persuade 
them  that  society  can  be  maintained  without  artifi 
cial  restraints,  as  well  as  the  solar  system ;  or  that 


POLITICS.  211 

the  private  citizen  might  be  reasonable  and  a  good 
neighbor,  without  the  hint  of  a  jail  or  a  confiscation. 
What  is  strange  too,  there  never  was  in  any  man 
sufficient  faith  in  the  power  of  rectitude  to  inspire 
him  with  the  broad  design  of  renovating  the  State 
on  the  principle  of  right  and  love.  All  those  who 
have  pretended  this  design  have  been  partial  re 
formers,  and  have  admitted  in  some  manner  the 
supremacy  of  the  bad  State.  I  do  not  call  to  mind 
a  single  human  being  who  has  steadily  denied  the 
authority  of  the  laws,  on  the  simple  ground  of  his 
own  moral  nature.  Such  designs,  full  of  genius 
and  full  of  faith  as  they  are,  are  not  entertained 
except  avowedly  as  air-pictures.  If  the  individual 
who  exhibits  them  dare  to  think  them  practicable, 
he  disgusts  scholars  and  churchmen  ;•  and  men  of 
talent  and  women  of  superior  sentiments  cannot 
hide  their  contempt.  Not  the  less  does  nature  con 
tinue  to  fill  the  heart  of  youth  with  suggestions  of 
this  enthusiasm,  and  there  are  now  men,  —  if  in 
deed  I  can  speak  in  the  plural  number,  —  more  ex 
actly,  I  will  say,  I  have  just  been  conversing  with 
one  man,  to  whom  no  weight  of  adverse  experience 
will  make  it  for  a  moment  appear  impossible  that 
thousands  of  human  beings  might  exercise  towards 
each  other  the  grandest  and  simplest  sentiments, 
as  well  as  a  knot  of  friends,  or  a  pair  of  lovers. 


NOMINALIST  AND  REALIST. 


In  countless  upward-striving  waves 

The  moon-drawn  tide-wave  strives  : 

In  thousand  far-transplanted  grafts 

The  parent  fruit  survives  ; 

So,  in  the  new-born  millions, 

The  perfect  Adam  lives. 

Not  less  are  summer  mornings  dear 

To  every  child  they  wake, 

And  each  with  novel  life  his  sphere 

Fills  for  his  proper  sake. 


VIII. 
NOMINALIST  AND  KEALIST. 


I  CANNOT  often  enough  say  that  a  man  is  only  a 
relative  and  representative  nature.  Each  is  a  hint 
of  the  truth,  but  far  enough  from  being  that  truth 
which  yet  he  quite  newly  and  inevitably  suggests 
to  us.  If  I  seek  it  in  him  I  shall  not  find  it.  Could 
any  man  conduct  into  me  the  pure  stream  of  that 
which  he  pretends  to  be !  Long  afterwards  I  find 
that  quality  elsewhere  which  he  promised  me.  The 
genius  of  the  Platonists  is  intoxicating  to  the  stu 
dent,  yet  how  few  particulars  of  it  can  I  detach 
from  all  their  books.  The  man  momentarily  stands 
for  the  thought,  but  will  not  bear  examination ;  and 
a  society  of  men  will  cursorily  represent  well  enough 
a  certain  quality  and  culture,  for  example,  chivalry 
or  beauty  of  manners ;  but  separate  them  and  there 
is  no  gentleman  and  no  lady  in  the  group.  The  least 
hint  sets  us  on  the  pursuit  of  a  character  which  no 
man  realizes.  We  have  such  exorbitant  eyes  that 
on  seeing  the  smallest  arc  we  complete  the  curve, 
and  when  the  curtain  is  lifted  from  the  diagram 


216  NOMINALIST  AND   REALIST. 

which  it  seemed  to  veil,  we  are  vexed  to  find  that 
no  more  was  drawn  than  just  that  fragment  of  an 
arc  which  we  first  beheld.  We  are  greatly  too  lib 
eral  in  our  construction  of  each  other's  facidty  and 
promise.  Exactly  what  the  parties  have  already 
done  they  shall  do  again  ;  but  that  which  we  in. 
f erred  from  their  nature  and  inception,  they  will 
not  do.  That  is  in  nature,  but  not  in  them.  That 
happens  in  the  world,  which  we  often  witness  in 
a  public  debate.  Each  of  the  speakers  expresses 
himself  imperfectly  ;  no  one  of  them  hears  much 
that  another  says,  such  is  the  preoccupation  of  mind 
of  each ;  and  the  audience,  who  have  only  to  hear 
and  not  to  speak,  judge  very  wisely  and  superiorly 
how  wrongheaded  and  unskilful  is  each  of  the  de 
baters  to  his  own  affair.  Great  men  or  men  of  great 
gifts  you  shall  easily  find,  but  symmetrical  men 
never.  When  I  meet  a  pure  intellectual  force  or  a 
generosity  of  affection,  I  believe  here  then  is  man  ; 
and  am  presently  mortified  by  the  discovery  that 
this  individual  is  no  more  available  to  his  own  or  to 
the  general  ends  than  his  companions  ;  because  the 
power  which  drew  my  respect  is  not  supported  by 
the  total  symphony  of  his  talents.  All  persons  exist 
to  society  by  some  shining  trait  of  beauty  or  utility 
which  they  have.  We  borrow  the  proportions  of 
the  man  from  that  one  fine  feature,  and  finish  the 
portrait  symmetrically ;  which  is  false,  for  the  rest 


NOMINALIST  AND  REALIST.  217 

of  his  body  is  small  or  deformed.  I  observe  a  per 
son  who  makes  a  good  public  appearance,  and  con 
clude  thence  the  perfection  of  his  private  character, 
on  which  this  is  based  ;  but  he  has  no  private  char* 
acter.  He  is  a  graceful  cloak  or  lay-figure  for  holi 
days.  All  our  poets,  heroes,  and  saints,  fail  utterly 
in  some  one  or  in  many  parts  to  satisfy  our  idea, 
fail  to  draw  our  spontaneous  interest,  and  so  leave 
us  without  any  hope  of  realization  but  in  our  own 
future.  Our  exaggeration  of  all  fine  characters 
arises  from  the  fact  that  we  identify  each  in  turn 
with  the  soul.  But  there  are  no  such  men  as  we 
fable ;  no  Jesus,  nor  Pericles,  nor  Caesar,  nor  An- 
gelo,  nor  Washington,  such  as  we  have  made.  We 
consecrate  a  great  deal  of  nonsense  because  it  wras 
allowed  by  great  men.  There  is  none  without  his 
foible.  I  believe  that  if  an  angel  should  come  to 
chant  the  chorus  of  the  moral  law,  he  would  eat  too 
much  gingerbread,  or  take  liberties  with  private 
letters,  or  do  some  precious  atrocity.  It  is  bad 
enough  that  our  geniuses  cannot  do  anything  use 
ful,  but  it  is  worse  that  no  man  is  fit  for  society 
who  has  fine  traits.  He  is  admired  at  a  distance, 
but  he  cannot  come  near  without  appearing  a  crip 
ple.  The  men  of  fine  parts  protect  themselves  by 
solitude,  or  by  courtesy,  or  by  satire,  or  by  an  acid 
worldly  manner ;  each  concealing  as  he  best  can 
his  incapacity  for  useful  association,  but  they  want 
either  love  or  self-reliance. 


218  NOMINALIST  AND  REALIST, 

Our  native  love  of  reality  joins  with  this  experi 
ence  to  teach  us  a  little  reserve,  and  to  dissuade 
a  too  sudden  surrender  to  the  brilliant  qualities  of 
persons.  Young  people  admire  talents  or  particu 
lar  excellences  ;  as  we  grow  older  we  value  total 
powers  and  effects,  as  the  impression,  the  quality, 
the  spirit  of  men  and  things.  The  genius  is  alL 
The  man,  —  it  is  his  system  :  we  do  not  try  a  soli 
tary  word  or  act,  but  his  habit.  The  acts  which 
you  praise,  I  praise  not,  since  they  are  departures 
from  his  faith,  and  are  mere  compliances.  The 
magnetism  which  arranges  tribes  and  races  in  one 
polarity  is  alone  to  be  respected  ;  the  men  are  steel- 
filings.  Yet  we  unjustly  select  a  particle,  and  say, 
4  O  steel-filing  number  one  !  what  heart-drawings 
I  feel  to  thee  !  what  prodigious  virtues  are  these  of 
thine  !  how  constitutional  to  thee,  and  incommuni 
cable  ! '  Whilst  we  speak  the  loadstone  is  with 
drawn  ;  down  falls  our  filing  in  a  heap  with  the 
rest,  and  we  continue  our  mummery  to  the  wretched 
shaving.  Let  us  go  for  universals;  for  the  mag 
netism,  not  for  the  needles.  Human  life  and  its 
persons  are  poor  empirical  pretensions.  A  personal 
influence  is  an  ignis  fatuus.  If  they  say  it  is  great, 
it  is  great ;  if  they  say  it  is  small,  it  is  small ;  you 
see  it,  and  you  see  it  not,  by  turns  ;  it  borrows  all 
its  size  from  the  momentary  estimation  of  the  speak 
ers  :  the  Will-of -the- wisp  vanishes  if  you  go  too 


NOMINALIST  AND  REALIST.  219 

near,  vanishes  if  you  go  too  far,  and  only  blazes  at 
one  angle.  Who  can  tell  if  Washington  be  a  great 
man  or  no  ?  Who  can  tell  if  Franklin  be  ?  Yes, 
or  any  but  the  twelve,  or  six,  or  three  great  gods 
of  fame  ?  And  they  too  loom  and  fade  before  the 
eternal. 

We  are  amphibious  creatures,  weaponed  for  two 
elements,  having  two  sets  of  faculties,  the  particu 
lar  and  the  catholic.  We  adjust  our  instrument 
for  general  observation,  and  sweep  the  heavens  as 
easily  as  we  pick  out  a  single  figure  in  the  terres 
trial  landscape.  We  are  practically  skilful  in  de 
tecting  elements  for  which  we  have  no  place  in  our 
theory,  and  no  name.  Thus  we  are  very  sensible 
of  an  atmospheric  influence  in  men  and  in  bodies 
of  men,  not  accounted  for  in  an  arithmetical  ad 
dition  of  all  their  measurable  properties.  There 
is  a  genius  of  a  nation,  which  is  not  to  be  found 
in  the  numerical  citizens,  but  which  characterizes 
the  society.  England,  strong,  punctual,  practical, 
well-spoken  England  I  should  not  find  if  I  should 
go  to  the  island  to  seek  it.  In  the  parliament, 
in  the  play-house,  at  dinner-tables,  I  might  see  a 
great  number  of  rich,  ignorant,  book-read,  conven 
tional,  proud  men,  —  many  old  women,  —  and  not 
anywhere  the  Englishman  who  made  the  good 
speeches,  combined  the  accurate  engines,  and  did 
the  bold  and  nervous  deeds  It  is  even  worse  in 


220  NOMINALIST  AND  REALIST. 

America,  where,  from  the  intellectual  quickness  of 
the  race,  the  genius  of  the  country  is  more  splen 
did  in  its  promise  and  more  slight  in  its  perform 
ance.  Webster  cannot  do  the  work  of  Webster. 
We  conceive  distinctly  enough  the  French,  the 
Spanish,  the  German  genius,  and  it  is  not  the  less 
real  that  perhaps  we  should  not  meet  in  either  of 
those  nations  a  single  individual  who  corresponded 
with  the  type.  We  infer  the  spirit  of  the  nation 
in  great  measure  from  the  language,  which  is  a 
sort  of  monument  to  which  each  forcible  individual 
in  a  course  of  many  hundred  years  has  contributed 
a  stone.  And,  universally,  a  good  example  of  this 
social  force  is  the  veracity  of  language,  which  can 
not  be  debauched.  In  any  controversy  concerning 
morals,  an  appeal  may  be  made  with  safety  to  the 
sentiments  which  the  language  of  the  people  ex 
presses.  Proverbs,  words,  and  grammar-inflections 
convey  the  public  sense  with  more  purity  and  pre 
cision  than  the  wisest  individual. 

In  the  famous  dispute  with  the  Nominalists,  the 
Realists  had  a  good  deal  of  reason.  General  ideas 
are  essences.  They  are  our  gods  :  they  round  and 
ennoble  the  most  partial  and  sordid  way  of  living. 
Our  proclivity  to  details  cannot  quite  degrade  our 
life  and  divest  it  of  poetry.  The  day-laborer  is 
reckoned  as  standing  at  the  foot  of  the  social  scale, 
yet  he  is  saturated  with  the  laws  of  the  world 


NOMINALIST  AND  REALIST.  221 

His  measures  are  the  hours ;  morning  and  night, 
solstice  and  equinox,  geometry,  astronomy  and  all 
the  lovely  accidents  of  nature  play  through  his 
mind.  Money,  which  represents  the  prose  of  life, 
and  which  is  hardly  spoken  of  in  parlors  without 
an  apology,  is,  in  its  effects  and  laws,  as  beautiful 
as  roses.  Property  keeps  the  accounts  of  the  world, 
and  is  always  moral.  The  property  will  be  found 
where  the  labor,  the  wisdom,  and  the  virtue  have 
been  in  nations,  in  classes,  and  (the  whole  life-time 
considered,  with  the  compensations)  in  the  individ 
ual  also.  How  wise  the  world  appears,  when  the 
laws  and  usages  of  nations  are  largely  detailed,  and 
the  completeness  of  the  municipal  system  is  consid 
ered!  Nothing  is  left  out.  If  you  go  into  the 
markets  and  the  custom-houses,  the  insurers'  and 
notaries'  offices,  the  offices  of  sealers  of  weights  and 
measures,  of  inspection  of  provisions,  —  it  will  ap 
pear  as  if  one  man  had  made  it  all.  Wherever 
you  go,  a  wit  like  your  own  has  been  before  you, 
and  has  realized  its  thought.  The  Eleusinian  mys 
teries,  the  Egyptian  architecture,  the  Indian  as 
tronomy,  the  Greek  sculpture,  show  that  there  al 
ways  were  seeing  and  knowing  men  in  the  planet. 
The  world  is  full  of  masonic  ties,  of  guilds,  of  se 
cret  and  public  legions  of  honor  ;  that  of  scholars, 
for  example  ;  and  that  of  gentlemen,  fraternizing 
with  the  upper  class  of  every  country  and  every 
culture. 


222  NOMINALIST  AND  REALIST. 

I  am  very  much  struck  in  literature  by  the  ap 
pearance  that  one  person  wrote  all  the  books  ;  as  if 
the  editor  of  a  journal  planted  his  body  of  report 
ers  in  different  parts  of  the  field  of  action,  and  re 
lieved  some  by  others  from  time  to  time  ;  but  there 
is  such  equality  and  identity  both  of  judgment  and 
point  of  view  in  the  narrative  that  it  is  plainly 
the  work  of  one  all-seeing,  all-hearing  gentleman. 
I  looked  into  Pope's  Odyssey  yesterday :  it  is  as 
correct  and  elegant  after  our  canon  of  to-day  as  if 
it  were  newly  written.  The  modernness  of  all  good 
books  seems  to  give  me  an  existence  as  wide  as 
man.  What  is  well  done  I  feel  as  if  I  did  ;  what 
is  ill  done  I  reck  not  of.  Shakspeare's  passages  of 
passion  (for  example,  in  Lear  and  Hamlet)  are  in 
the  very  dialect  of  the  present  year.  I  am  faithful 
again  to  the  whole  over  the  members  in  my  use  of 
books.  I  find  the  most  pleasure  in  reading  a  book 
in  a  manner  least  flattering  to  the  author.  I  read 
Proclus,  and  sometimes  Plato,  as  I  might  read  a 
dictionary,  for  a  mechanical  help  to  the  fancy  and 
the  imagination.  I  read  for  the  lustres,  as  if  one 
should  use  a  fine  picture  in  a  chromatic  experiment, 
for  its  rich  colors.  'T  is  not  Proclus,  but  a  piece  of 
nature  and  fate  that  I  explore.  It  is  a  greater  joy 
to  see  the  author's  author,  than  himself.  A  higher 
pleasure  of  the  same  kind  I  found  lately  at  a  con 
cert,  where  I  went  to  hear  Handel's  Messiah.  As 


NOMINALIST  AND  REALIST.  223 

the  master  overpowered  the  littleness  and  incapa- 
bleness  of  the  performers  and  made  them  conduc 
tors  of  his  electricity,  so  it  was  easy  to  observe 
what  efforts  nature  was  making,  through  so  many 
hoarse,  wooden,  and  imperfect  persons,  to  produce 
beautiful  voices,  fluid  and  soul-guided  men  and 
women.  The  genius  of  nature  was  paramount  at 
the  oratorio. 

This  preference  of  the  genius  to  the  parts  is  the 
secret  of  that  deification  of  art,  which  is  found  in 
all  superior  minds.  Art,  in  the  artist,  is  propor 
tion,  or  a  habitual  respect  to  the  whole  by  an  eye 
loving  beauty  in  details.  And  the  wonder  and 
charm  of  it  is  the  sanity  in  insanity  which  it  de 
notes.  Proportion  is  almost  impossible  to  human 
beings.  There  is  no  one  who  does  not  exaggerate. 
In  conversation,  men  are  encumbered  with  person 
ality,  and  talk  too  much.  In  modern  sculpture, 
picture,  and  poetry,  the  beauty  is  miscellaneous; 
the  artist  works  here  and  there  and  at  all  points, 
adding  and  adding,  instead  of  unfolding  the  unit  of 
his  thought.  Beautiful  details  we  must  have,  or  no 
artist ;  but  they  must  be  means  and  never  other. 
The  eye  must  not  lose  sight  for  a  moment  of  the 
purpose.  Lively  boys  write  to  their  ear  and  eye,  and 
the  cool  reader  finds  nothing  but  sweet  jingles  in  it. 
When  they  grow  older,  they  respect  the  argument, 

We  obey  the  same  intellectual  integrity  when  we 


224  NOMINALIST  AND  REALIST. 

study  in  exceptions  the  law  of  the  world.  Anom 
alous  facts,  as  the  never  quite  obsolete  rumors  of 
magic  and  demonology,  and  the  new  allegations  of 
phrenologists  and  neurologists,  are  of  ideal  use. 
They  are  good  indications.  Homoeopathy  is  insig 
nificant  as  an  art  of  healing,  but  of  great  value  as 
criticism  on  the  hygeia  or  medical  practice  of  the 
time.  So  with  Mesmerism,  Swedenborgism,  Fou- 
rierism,  and  the  Millennial  Church ;  they  are  poor 
pretensions  enough,  but  good  criticism  on  the  sci 
ence,  philosophy,  and  preaching  of  the  day.  For 
these  abnormal  insights  of  the  adepts  ought  to  be 
normal,  and  things  of  course. 

All  things  show  us  that  on  every  side  we  are  very 
near  to  the  best.  It  seems  not  worth  while  to  exe 
cute  with  too  much  pains  some  one  intellectual,  or 
aesthetical,  or  civil  feat,  when  presently  the  dream 
will  scatter,  and  we  shall  burst  into  universal  power. 
The  reason  of  idleness  and  of  crime  is  the  deferring 
of  our  hopes.  Whilst  we  are  waiting  we  beguile 
the  time  with  jokes,  with  sleep,  with  eating,  and 
with  crimes. 

Thus  we  settle  it  in  our  cool  libraries,  that  all  the 
agents  with  which  we  deal  are  subalterns,  which  we 
can  well  afford  to  let  pass,  and  life  will  be  simpler 
when  we  live  at  the  centre  and  flout  the  surfaces. 
I  wish  to  speak  with  all  respect  of  persons,  but  some* 


NOMINALIST  AND  REALIST.  225 

rimes  I  must  pinch  myself  to  keep  awake  and  pre 
serve  the  due  decorum.  They  melt  so  fast  into  each 
other  that  they  are  like  grass  and  trees,  and  it  needs 
an  effort  to  treat  them  as  individuals.  Though  the 
uninspired  man  certainly  finds  persons  a  conven- 
iency  in  household  matters,  the  divine  man  does  not 
respect  them ;  he  sees  them  as  a  rack  of  clouds,  or 
a  fleet  of  ripples  which  the  wind  drives  over  the  sur 
face  of  the  water.  But  this  is  flat  rebellion.  Na 
ture  will  not  be  Buddhist :  she  resents  generalizing, 
and  insults  the  philosopher  in  every  moment  with  a 
million  of  fresh  particulars.  It  is  all  idle  talking : 
as  much  as  a  man  is  a  whole,  so  is  he  also  a  part ; 
and  it  were  partial  not  to  see  it.  What  you  say  in 
your  pompous  distribution  only  distributes  you  into 
your  class  and  section.  You  have  not  got  rid  of 
parts  by  denying  them,  but  are  the  more  partial. 
You  are  one  thing,  but  Nature  is  one  thing  and  the 
other  thing,  in  the  same  moment.  She  will  not  re 
main  orbed  in  a  thought,  but  rushes  into  persons ; 
and  when  each  person,  inflamed  to  a  fury  of  person 
ality,  would  conquer  all  things  to  his  poor  crotchet, 
she  raises  up  against  him  another  person,  and  by 
many  persons  incarnates  again  a  sort  of  whole. 
She  will  have  all.  Nick  Bottom  cannot  play  all 
the  parts,  work  it  how  he  may  ;  there  will  be  some 
body  else,  and  the  world  will  be  round.  Everything 
must  have  its  flower  or  effort  at  the  beautiful, 

VOL.  in.  15 


NOMINALIST  AND  REALIST. 

coarser  or  finer  according  to  its  stuff.  They  re« 
lieve  and  recommend  each  other,  and  the  sanity  of 
society  is  a  balance  of  a  thousand  insanities.  She 
punishes  abstractionists,  and  will  only  forgive  an  in 
duction  which  is  rare  and  casual.  We  like  to  come 
to  a  height  of  land  and  see  the  landscape,  just  as  we 
value  a  general  remark  in  conversation.  But  it  is 
not  the  intention  of  Nature  that  we  should  live  by 
general  views.  We  fetch  fire  and  water,  run  about 
all  day  among  the  shops  and  markets,  and  get  our 
clothes  and  shoes  made  and  mended,  and  are  the 
victims  of  these  details ;  and  once  in  a  fortnight  we 
arrive  perhaps  at  a  rational  moment.  If  we  were 
not  thus  infatuated,  if  we  saw  the  real  from  hour 
to  hour,  we  should  not  be  here  to  write  and  to  read, 
but  should  have  been  burned  or  frozen  long  ago. 
She  would  never  get  anything  done,  if  she  suffered 
admirable  Crichtons  and  universal  geniuses.  She 
loves  better  a  wheelwright  who  dreams  all  night  of 
wheels,  and  a  groom  who  is  part  of  his  horse ;  for 
she  is  full  of  work,  and  these  are  her  hands.  As 
the  frugal  farmer  takes  care  that  his  cattle  shall 
eat  down  the  rowen,  and  swine  shall  eat  the  waste 
of  his  house,  and  poultry  shall  pick  the  crumbs,  — 
so  our  economical  mother  dispatches  a  new  genius 
and  habit  of  mind  into  every  district  and  condition 
of  existence,  plants  an  eye  wherever  a  new  ray  of 
light  can  fall,  and  gathering  up  into  somo  man 


NOMINALIST  AND  REALIST.  227 

every  property  in  the  universe,  establishes  thou 
sandfold  occult  mutual  attractions  among  her  off 
spring,  that  all  this  wash  and  waste  of  power  may 
be  imparted  and  exchanged. 

Great  dangers  undoubtedly  accrue  from  this  in 
carnation  and  distribution  of  the  godhead,  and 
hence  Nature  has  her  maligners,  as  if  she  were 
Circe;  and  Alphonso  of  Castile  fancied  he  could 
have  given  useful  advice.  But  she  does  not  go  un 
provided  ;  she  has  hellebore  at  the  bottom  of  the 
cup.  Solitude  would  ripen  a  plentiful  crop  of  des 
pots.  The  recluse  thinks  of  men  as  having  his 
manner,  or  as  not  having  his  manner ;  and  as  hav 
ing  degrees  of  it,  more  and  less.  But  when  he 
comes  into  a  public  assembly  he  sees  that  men  have 
very  different  manners  from  his  own,  and  in  their 
way  admirable.  In  his  childhood  and  youth  he  has 
had  many  checks  and  censures,  and  thinks  mod 
estly  enough  of  his  own  endowment.  When  after 
wards  he  comes  to  unfold  it  in  propitious  circum 
stance,  it  seems  the  only  talent ;  he  is  delighted 
with  his  success,  and  accounts  himself  already  the 
fellow'of  the  great.  But  he  goes  into  a  mob,  into 
a  banking  house,  into  a  mechanic's  shop,  into  a 
mill,  into  a  laboratory,  into  a  ship,  into  a  camp,  and 
in  each  new  place  he  is  no  better  than  an  idiot ; 
other  talents  take  place,  and  rule  the  hour.  The 
rotation  which  whirls  every  leaf  and  pebble  to  the 


228  NOMINALIST  AND  REALIST. 

meridian,  reaches  to  every  gift  of  man,  and  we  all 
take  turns  at  the  top. 

For  Nature,  who  abhors  mannerism,  has  set  her 
heart  on  breaking  up  all  styles  and  tricks,  and  it 
is  so  much  easier  to  do  what  one  has  done  before 
than  to  do  a  new  thing,  that  there  is  a  perpetual 
tendency  to  a  set  mode.  In  every  conversation, 
even  the  highest,  there  is  a  certain  trick,  which 
may  be  soon  learned  by  an  acute  person  and  then 
that  particular  style  continued  indefinitely.  Each 
man  too  is  a  tyrant  in  tendency,  because  he  would 
impose  his  idea  on  others  ;  and  their  trick  is  their 
natural  defence.  Jesus  would  absorb  the  race ; 
but  Tom  Paine  or  the  coarsest  blasphemer  helps 
humanity  by  resisting  this  exuberance  of  power. 
Hence  the  immense  benefit  of  party  in  politics,  as 
it  reveals  faults  of  character  in  a  chief,  which  the 
intellectual  force  of  the  persons,  with  ordinary  op 
portunity  and  not  hurled  into  aphelion  by  hatred, 
could  not  have  seen.  Since  we  are  all  so  stupid, 
what  benefit  that  there  should  be  two  stupidities ! 
It  is  like  that  brute  advantage  so  essential  to  as 
tronomy,  of  having  the  diameter  of  the  earth's  or 
bit  for  a  base  of  its  triangles.  Democracy  is  mo 
rose,  and  runs  to  anarchy,  but  in  the  State  and  in 
the  schools  it  is  indispensable  to  resist  the  consol 
idation  of  all  men  into  a  few  men.  If  John  was 
perfect,  why  are  you  and  I  alive  ?  As  long  as  any 


NOMINALIST  AND  REALIST.  229 

man  exists,  there  is  some  need  of  him ;  let  him 
fight  for  his  own.  A  new  poet  has  appeared ;  a 
new  character  approached  us ;  why  should  we  re 
fuse  to  eat  bread  until  we  have  found  his  regiment 
and  section  in  our  old  army-files  ?  Why  not  a  new 
man  ?  Here  is  a  new  enterprise  of  Brook  Farm, 
of  Skeneateles,  of  Northampton  :  why  so  impatient 
to  baptize  them  Essenes,  or  Port-Royalists,  or 
Shakers,  or  by  any  known  and  effete  name  ?  Let 
it  be  a  new  way  of  living.  Why  have  only  two  or 
three  ways  of  life,  and  not  thousands  ?  Every 
man  is  wanted,  and  no  man  is  wanted  much.  We 
came  this  time  for  condiments,  not  for  corn.  We 
want  the  great  genius  only  for  joy  ;  for  one  star 
more  in  our  constellation,  for  one  tree  more  in  our 
grove.  But  he  thinks  we  wish  to  belong  to  him,  as 
he  wishes  to  occupy  us.  He  greatly  mistakes  us. 
I  think  I  have  done  well  if  I  have  acquired  a  new 
word  from  a  good  author ;  and  my  business  with 
him  is  to  find  my  own,  though  it  were  only  to  melt 
him  down  into  an  epithet  or  an  image  for  daily 
use:  - 

"  Into  paint  will  I  grind  thee,  my  bride  !  " 

To  embroil  the  confusion,  and  make  it  impossi 
ble  to  arrive  at  any  general  statement,  —  when  we 
have  insisted  on  the  imperfection  of  individuals, 
our  affections  and  our  experience  urge  that  every 


230  NOMINALIST  AND  REALIST. 

individual  is  entitled  to  honor,  and  a  very  generous 
treatment  is  sure  to  be  repaid.  A  recluse  sees  only 
two  or  three  persons,  and  allows  them  all  their 
room  ;  they  spread  themselves  at  large.  The  states 
man  looks  at  many,  and  compares  the  few  habitu 
ally  with  others,  and  these  look  less.  Yet  are  they 
not  entitled  to  this  generosity  of  reception  ?  and  is 
not  munificence  the  means  of  insight  ?  For  though 
gamesters  say  that  the  cards  beat  all  the  players, 
though  they  were  never  so  skilful,  yet  in  the  con 
test  we  are  now  considering,  the  players  are  also 
the  game,  and  share  the  power  of  the  cards.  If 
you  criticise  a  fine  genius,  the  odds  are  that  you 
are  out  of  your  reckoning,  and  instead  of  the  poet, 
are  censuring  your  own  caricature  of  him.  For 
there  is  somewhat  spheral  and  infinite  in  every 
man,  especially  in  every  genius,  which,  if  you  can 
come  very  near  him,  sports  with  all  your  limita 
tions.  For  rightly  every  man  is  a  channel  through 
which  heaven  floweth,  and  whilst  I  fancied  I  was 
criticising  him,  I  was  censuring  or  rather  terminat 
ing  my  own  soul.  After  taxing  Goethe  as  a  cour 
tier,  artificial,  unbelieving,  worldly,  —  I  took  up 
this  book  of  Helena,  and  found  him  an  Indian  of 
the  wilderness,  a  piece  of  pure  nature  like  an  apple 
or  an  oak,  large  as  morning  or  night,  and  virtuous 
as  a  brier-rose. 

But  care  is  taken  that  the  whole  tune  shall  be 


NOMINALIST  AND  REALIST.  231 

played.  If  we  were  not  kept  among  surfaces, 
everything  would  be  large  and  universal ;  now  the 
excluded  attributes  burst  in  on  us  with  the  more 
brightness  that  they  have  been  excluded.  "  Your 
turn  now,  my  turn  next,"  is  the  rule  of  the  game. 
The  universality  being  hindered  in  its  primary 
form,  comes  in  the  secondary  form  of  all  sides ; 
the  points  come  in  succession  to  the  meridian,  and 
by  the  speed  of  rotation  a  new  whole  is  formed. 
Nature  keeps  herself  whole  and  her  representation 
complete  in  the  experience  of  each  mind.  She 
suffers  no  seat  to  be  vacant  in  her  college.  It  is 
the  secret  of  the  world  that  all  things  subsist  and 
do  not  die  but  only  retire  a  little  from  sight  and 
afterwards  return  again.  Whatever  does  not  con 
cern  us  is  concealed  from  us.  As  soon  as  a  person 
is  no  longer  related  to  our  present  well-being,  he  is 
concealed,  or  dies,  as  we  say.  Really,  all  things 
and  persons  are  related  to  us,  but  according  to 
our  nature  they  act  on  us  not  at  once  but  in  suc 
cession,  and  we  are  made  aware  of  their  presence 
one  at  a  time.  All  persons,  all  things  which  we 
have  known,  are  here  present,  and  many  more  than 
we  see ;  the  world  is  full.  As  the  ancient  said,  the 
world  is  a  plenum  or  solid ;  and  if  we  saw  all 
things  that  really  surround  us  we  should  be  impris 
oned  and  unable  to  move.  For  though  nothing  is 
'impassable  to  the  soul,  but  all  things  are  pervious 


232  NOMINALIST  AND  REALIST. 

to  it  and  like  highways,  yet  this  is  only  whilst  the 
soul  does  not  see  them.  As  soon  as  the  soul  sees 
any  object,  it  stops  before  that  object.  Therefore 
the  divine  Providence  which  keeps  the  universe 
open  in  every  direction  to  the  soul,  conceals  all  the 
furniture  and  all  the  persons  that  do  not  concern  a 
particular  soul,  from  the  senses  of  that  individual. 
Through  solidest  eternal  things  the  man  finds  his 
road  as  if  they  did  not  subsist,  and  does  not  once 
suspect  their  being.  As  soon  as  he  needs  a  new 
object,  suddenly  he  beholds  it,  and  no  longer  at~ 
tempts  to  pass  through  it,  but  takes  another  way. 
When  he  has  exhausted  for  the  time  the  nourish 
ment  to  be  drawn  from  any  one  person  or  thing, 
that  object  is  withdrawn  from  his  observation,  and 
though  still  in  his  immediate  neighborhood,  he  does 
not  suspect  its  presence.  Nothing  is  dead  :  men 
feign  themselves  dead,  and  endure  mock  funerals 
and  mournful  obituaries,  and  there  they  stand  look 
ing  out  of  the  window,  sound  and  well,  in  some  new 
and  strange  disguise.  Jesus  is  not  dead ;  he  is 
very  well  alive  :  nor  John,  nor  Paul,  nor  Mahomet, 
nor  Aristotle  ;  at  times  we  believe  we  have  seen 
them  all,  and  could  easily  tell  the  names  under 
which  they  go. 

If  we  cannot  make  voluntary  and  conscious 
steps  in  the  admirable  science  of  universals,  let  us 
Bee  the  parts  wisely,  and  infer  the  genius  of  nature 


NOMINALIST  AND  REALIST.  233 

from  the  best  particulars  with  a  becoming  charity,. 
What  is  best  in  each  kind  is  an  index  of  what 
should  be  the  average  of  that  thing.  Love  shows 
me  the  opulence  of  nature,  by  disclosing  to  me  in 
my  friend  a  hidden  wealth,  and  I  infer  an  equal 
depth  of  good  in  every  other  direction.  It  is  com 
monly  said  by  farmers  that  a  good  pear  or  apple 
costs  no  more  time  or  pains  to  rear  than  a  poor 
one;  so  I  would  have  no  work  of  art,  no  speech,  or 
action,  or  thought,  or  friend,  but  the  best. 

The  end  and  the  means,  the  gamester  and  the 
game,  —  life  is  made  up  of  the  intermixture  and 
reaction  of  these  two  amicable  powers,  whose  mar 
riage  appears  beforehand  monstrous,  as  each  denies 
and  tends  to  abolish  the  other.  We  must  reconcile 
the  contradictions  as  we  can,  but  their  discord  and 
their  concord  introduce  wild  absurdities  into  our 
thinking  and  speech.  No  sentence  will  hold  the 
whole  truth,  and  the  only  way  in  which  we  ccin  be 
just,  is  by  giving  ourselves  the  lie  ;  Speech  is  bet 
ter  than  silence  ;  silence  is  better  than  speech ;  — 
All  things  are  in  contact ;  every  atom  has  a  sphere 
of  repulsion ;  —  Things  are,  and  are  not,  at  the 
same  time ;  —  and  the  like.  All  the  universe  over, 
there  is  but  one  thing,  this  old  Two-Face,  c^eator- 
creature,  mind-matter,  right-wrong,  of  which  any 
proposition  may  be  affirmed  or  denied.  Very  fitly 
therefore  I  assert  that  every  man  is  a  parti-list  \ 


234  NOMINALIST  AND  REALIST. 

that  nature  secures  him  as  an  instrument  by  self- 
conceit,  preventing  the  tendencies  to  religion  and 
science  ;  and  now  further  assert,  that,  each  man's 
genius  being  nearly  and  affectionately  explored,  he 
is  justified  in  his  individuality,  as  his  nature  is 
found  to  be  immense ;  and  now  I  add  that  every 
man  is  a  universalist  also,  and,  as  our  earth,  whilst 
it  spins  on  its  own  axis,  spins  all  the  time  around 
the  sun  through  the  celestial  spaces,  so  the  least  of 
its  rational  children,  the  most  dedicated  to  his  pri 
vate  affair,  works  out,  though  as  it  were  under 
a  disguise,  the  universal  problem.  We  fancy  men 
are  individuals;  so  are  pumpkins;  but  every  pump 
kin  in  the  field  goes  through  every  point  of  pump 
kin  history.  The  rabid  democrat,  as  soon  as  he  is 
senator  and  rich  man,  has  ripened  beyond  possibil 
ity  of  sincere  radicalism,  and  unless  he  can  resist 
the  sun,  he  must  be  conservative  the  remainder  of 
his  days.  Lord  Eldon  said  in  his  old  age  that  "  if 
he  were  to  begin  life  again,  he  would  be  damned 
but  he  would  begin  as  agitator." 

We  hide  this  universality  if  we  can,  but  it  ap 
pears  at  all  points.  We  are  as  ungrateful  as  chil 
dren.  There  is  nothing  we  cherish  and  strive  to 
draw  to  us  but  in  some  hour  we  turn  and  rend  it. 
WQ  keep  a  running  fire  of  sarcasm  at  ignorance 
and  the  life  of  the  senses ;  then  goes  by,  perchance, 
a  fair  girl,  a  piece  of  life,  gay  and  happy,  and 


NOMINALIST  AND  REALIST.  235 

making  the  commonest  offices  beautiful  by  the  en 
ergy  and  heart  with  which  she  does  them ;  and  see 
ing  this  we  admire  and  love  her  and  them,  and  say, 
4  Lo  !  a  genuine  creature  of  the  fair  earth,  not  dis 
sipated  or  too  early  ripened  by  books,  philosophy, 
religion,  society,  or  care ! '  insinuating  a  treachery 
and  contempt  for  all  we  had  so  long  loved  and 
wrought  in  ourselves  and  others. 

If  we  could  have  any  security  against  moods ! 
If  the  profoundest  prophet  could  be  holden  to  his 
words,  and  the  hearer  who  is  ready  to  sell  all  and 
join  the  crusade  could  have  any  certificate  that  to 
morrow  his  prophet  shall  not  unsay  his  testimony ! 
But  the  Truth  sits  veiled  there  on  the  Bench,  and 
never  interposes  an  adamantine  syllable ;  and  the 
most  sincere  and  revolutionary  doctrine,  put  as  if 
the  ark  of  God  were  carried  forward  some  furlongs, 
and  planted  there  for  the  succor  of  the  world,  shall 
in  a  few  weeks  be  coldly  set  aside  by  the  same 
speaker,  as  morbid  ;  "  I  thought  I  was  right,  but  I 
was  not," —  and  the  same  immeasurable  credulity 
demanded  for  new  audacities.  If  we  were  not  of 
all  opinions  !  if  we  did  not  in  any  moment  shift  the 
platform  011  which  we  stand,  and  look  and  speak 
from  another  !  if  there  could  be  any  regulation, 
any  4  one-hour-rule,'  that  a  man  should  never  leave 
his  point  of  view  without  sound  of  trumpet.  I 
am  always  insincere,  as  always  knowing  there  are 
other  moods. 


236  NOMINALIST  AND  REALIST. 

How  sincere  and  confidential  we  can  be,  saying 
all  that  lies  in  the  mind,  and  yet  go  away  feeling 
that  all  is  yet  unsaid,  from  the  incapacity  of  the 
parties  to  know  each  other,  although  they  use  the 
same  words !  My  companion  assumes  to  know  my 
mood  and  habit  of  thought,  and  we  go  on  from 
explanation  to  explanation  until  all  is  said  which 
words  can,  and  we  leave  matters  just  as  they  were 
at  first,  because  of  that  vicious  assumption.  Is  it 
that  every  man  believes  every  other  to  be  an  in 
curable  partialist,  and  himself  a  universalist  ?  I 
talked  yesterday  with  a  pair  of  philosophers  ;  I  en 
deavored  to  show  my  good  men  that  I  liked  every 
thing  by  turns  and  nothing  long  ;  that  I  loved  the 
centre,  but  doated  on  the  superficies ;  that  I  loved 
man,  if  men  seemed  to  me  mice  and  rats  ;  that  I 
revered  saints,  but  woke  up  glad  that  the  old  pagan 
world  stood  its  ground  and  died  hard  :  that  I  was 
glad  of  men  of  every  gift  and  nobility,  but  would 
not  live  in  their  arms.  Could  they  but  once  under 
stand  that  I  loved  to  know  that  they  existed,  and 
heartily  wished  them  God-speed,  yet,  out  of  my 
poverty  of  life  and  thought,  had  no  word  or  wel 
come  for  them  when  they  came  to  see  me,  and 
could  well  consent  to  their  living  in  Oregon  for 
any  claim  I  felt  on  them,  —  it  would  be  a  great 
satisfaction. 


NEW  ENGLAND  REFORMERS 


In  the  suburb,  in  the  town, 
On  the  railway,  in  the  square, 
Came  a  beam  of  goodness  down 
Doubling  daylight  everywhere : 
Peace  now  each  for  malice  takes 
Beauty  for  his  sinful  weeds, 
For  the  angel  Hope  aye  makes 
Him  an  angel  whom  she  leads. 


NEW  ENGLAND  REFORMERS. 

A    LECTURE  READ  BEFORE    THE    SOCIETY  IN   AMORY 
HALL,  ON  SUNDAY,  MARCH  3,  1844. 

WHOEVER  has  had  opportunity  of  acquaintance 
with  society  in  New  England  during  the  last  twen 
ty-five  years,  with  those  middle  and  with  those  lead 
ing  sections  that  may  constitute  any  just  represen 
tation  of  the  character  and  aim  of  the  community, 
will  have  been  struck  with  the  great  activity  of 
thought  and  experimenting.  His  attention  must  be 
commanded  by  the  signs  that  the  Church,  or  relig 
ious  party,  is  falling  from  the  Church  nominal,  and 
is  appearing  in  temperance  and  non-resistance  socie 
ties;  in  movements  of  abolitionists  and  of  social 
ists  ;  and  in  very  significant  assemblies  called  Sab 
bath  and  Bible  Conventions  ;  composed  of  ultraists, 
of  seekers,  of  all  the  soul  of  the  soldiery  of  dissent, 
and  meeting  to  call  in  question  the  authority  of  the 
Sabbath,  of  the  priesthood,  and  of  the  Church.  In 
these  movements  nothing  was  more  remarkable 
than  the  discontent  they  begot  in  the  movers.  The 
spirit  of  protest  and  of  detachment  drove  the  mem 
bers  of  these  Conventions  to  bear  testimony  against 


240  NEW  ENGLAND  REFORMERS. 

the  Church,  and  immediately  afterwards  to  declare 
their  discontent  with  these  Conventions,  their  inde 
pendence  of  their  colleagues,  and  their  impatience 
of  the  methods  whereby  they  were  working.  They 
defied  each  other,  like  a  congress  of  kings,  each  of 
whom  had  a  realm  to  rule,  and  a  way  of  his  own^ 
that  made  concert  unprofitable.  What  a  fertility 
of  projects  for  the  salvation  of  the  world  !  One 
apostle  thought  all  men  should  go  to  farming,  and 
another  that  no  man  should  buy  or  sell,  that  the  use 
of  money  was  the  cardinal  evil ;  another  that  the 
mischief  was  in  our  diet,  that  we  eat  and  drink 
damnation.  These  made  unleavened  bread,  and 
were  foes  to  the  death  to  fermentation.  It  was  in 
vain  urged  by  the  housewife  that  God  made  yeast, 
as  well  as  dough,  and  loves  fermentation  just  as 
dearly  as  he  loves  vegetation ;  that  fermentation 
develops  the  saccharine  element  in  the  grain,  and 
makes  it  more  palatable  and  more  digestible.  No ; 
they  wish  the  pure  wheat,  and  will  die  but  it  shall 
not  ferment.  Stop,  dear  nature,  these  incessant 
advances  of  thine  ;  let  us  scotch  these  ever-rolling 
wheels !  Others  attacked  the  system  of  agricul 
ture,  the  use  of  animal  manures  in  farming,  and 
the  tyranny  of  man  over  brute  nature ;  these  abuses 
polluted  his  food.  The  ox  must  be  taken  from  the 
plough  and  the  horse  from  the  cart,  the  hundred 
acres  of  the  farm  must  be  spaded,  and  the  man  must 


NEW  ENGLAND  REFORMERS.  241 

walk,  wherever  boats  and  locomotives  will  not  carry 
him.  Even  the  insect  world  was  to  be  defended,  — 
that  had  been  too  long  neglected,  and  a  society  for 
the  protection  of  ground-worms,  slugs,  and  mosqui- 
tos  was  to  be  incorporated  without  delay.  With 
these  appeared  the  adepts  of  homeopathy,  of  hy 
dropathy,  of  mesmerism,  of  phrenology,  and  their 
wonderful  theories  of  the  Christian  miracles !  Oth 
ers  assailed  particular  vocations,  as  that  of  the  law 
yer,  that  of  the  merchant,  of  the  manufacturer,  of 
the  clergyman,  of  the  scholar.  Others  attacked  the 
institution  of  marriage  as  the  fountain  of  social 
evils.  Others  devoted  themselves  to  the  worrying 
of  churches  and  meetings  for  public  worship  ;  and 
the  fertile  forms  of  antinomianism  among  the  elder 
puritans  seemed  to  have  their  match  in  the  plenty 
of  the  new  harvest  of  reform. 

With  this  din  of  opinion  and  debate  there  was  a 
keener  scrutiny  of  institutions  and  domestic  life 
than  any  we  had  known ;  there  was  sincere  protest 
ing  against  existing  evils,  and  there  were  changes 
of  employment  dictated  by  conscience.  No  doubt 
there  was  plentiful  vaporing,  and  cases  of  backslid 
ing  might  occur.  But  in  each  of  these  movements 
emerged  a  good  result,  a  tendency  to  the  adoption 
of  simpler  methods,  and  an  assertion  of  the  suffi 
ciency  of  the  private  man.  Thus  it  was  directly  in 
the  spirit  and  genius  of  the  age,  what  happened  in 

VOL.   III.  16 


242  NEW  ENGLAND  REFORMERS. 

one  instance  when  a  church  censured  and  threatened 
to  excommunicate  one  of  its  members  on  account 
of  the  somewhat  hostile  part  to  the  church  which 
his  conscience  led  him  to  take  in  the  anti-slavery  busi 
ness  ;  the  threatened  individual  immediately  ex 
communicated  the  church,  in  a  public  and  formal 
process.  This  has  been  several  times  repeated :  it 
was  excellent  when  it  was  done  the  first  time,  but 
of  course  loses  all  value  when  it  is  copied.  Every 
project  in  the  history  of  reform,  no  matter  how  vio 
lent  and  surprising,  is  good  when  it  is  the  dictate 
of  a  man's  genius  and  constitution,  but  very  dull 
and  suspicious  when  adopted  from  another.  It  is 
right  and  beautiful  in  any  man  to  say,  '  I  will  take 
this  coat,  or  this  book,  or  this  measure  of  corn  of 
yours,'  —  in  whom  we  see  the  act  to  be  original, 
and  to  flow  from  the  whole  spirit  and  faith  of  him ; 
for  then  that  taking  will  have  a  giving  as  free  and 
divine ;  but  we  are  very  easily  disposed  to  resist 
the  same  generosity  of  speech  when  we  miss  origi 
nality  and  truth  to  character  in  it. 

There  was  in  all  the  practical  activities  of  New 
England  for  the  last  quarter  of  a  century,  a  grad 
ual  withdrawal  of  tender  consciences  from  the  so 
cial  organizations.  There  is  observable  throughout, 
the  contest  between  mechanical  and  spiritual  meth 
ods,  but  with  a  steady  tendency  of  the  thoughtful 
and  virtuous  to  a  deeper  belief  and  reliance  on  spir* 
itual  facts. 


NEW  ENGLAND  REFORMERS.  243 

In  politics  for  example  it  is  easy  to  see  the  pro 
gress  of  dissent.  The  country  is  full  of  rebellion  ; 
the  country  is  full  of  kings.  Hands  off !  let  there 
be  no  control  and  no  interference  in  the  adminis 
tration  of  the  affairs  of  this  kingdom  of  me. 
Hence  the  growth  of  the  doctrine  and  of  the  party 
of  Free  Trade,  and  the  willingness  to  try  that  ex 
periment,  in  the  face  of  what  appear  incontestable 
facts.  I  confess,  the  motto  of  the  Globe  news- 
paper  is  so  attractive  to  me  that  I  can  seldom  find 
much  appetite  to  read  what  is  below  it  in  its  col 
umns  :  "  The  world  is  governed  too  much."  So 
the  country  is  frequently  affording  solitary  exam 
ples  of  resistance  to  the  government,  solitary  nul- 
lifiers,  who  throw  themselves  on  their  reserved 
rights ;  nay,  who  have  reserved  all  their  rights  ; 
who  reply  to  the  assessor  and  to  the  clerk  of  court 
that  they  do  not  know  the  State,  and  embarrass  the 
courts  of  law  by  non-juring  and  the  commander- 
in-chief  of  the  militia  by  non-resistance. 

The  same  disposition  to  scrutiny  and  dissent  ajv 
peared  in  civil,  festive,  neighborly,  and  domestic 
society.  A  restless,  prying,  conscientious  criticism 
broke  out  in  unexpected  quarters.  Who  gave  me 
the  money  with  which  I  bought  my  coat  ?  Why, 
should  professional  labor  and  that  of  the  counting- 
house  be  paid  so  disproportionately  to  the  labor  of 
the  porter  and  woodsawyer?  This  whole  business 


244  NEW  ENGLAND  REFORMERS. 

of  Trade  gives  me  to  pause  and  think,  as  it  consti* 
tutes  false  relations  between  men  ;  inasmuch  as  1 
am  prone  to  count  myself  relieved  of  any  respon 
sibility  to  behave  well  and  nobly  to  that  person 
whom  I  pay  with  money;  whereas  if  I  had  not  that 
commodity,  I  should  be  put  on  my  good  behavior 
in  all  companies,  and  man  would  be  a  benefactor  to 
man,  as  being  himself  his  only  certificate  that  he 
had  a  right  to  those  aids  and  services  which  each 
asked  of  the  otner.  Am  I  not  too  protected  a  per 
son  ?  is  there  not  a  wide  disparity  between  the  lot 
of  me  and  the  lot  of  thee,  my  poor  brother,  my 
poor  sister  ?  Am  I  not  defrauded  of  my  best  cul 
ture  in  the  loss  of  those  gymnastics  which  manual 
labor  and  the  emergencies  of  poverty  constitute  ? 
I  find  nothing  healthful  or  exalting  in  the  smooth 
conventions  of  society ;  I  do  not  like  the  close  air 
of  saloons.  I  begin  to  suspect  myself  to  be  a 
prisoner,  though  treated  with  all  this  courtesy  and 
luxury.  I  pay  a  destructive  tax  in  my  conformity. 
The  same  insatiable  criticism  may  be  traced  in 
the  efforts  for  the  reform  of  Education.  The  pop 
ular  education  has  been  taxed  with  a  want  of  truth 
and  nature.  It  was  complained  that  an  education 
to  things  was  not  given.  We  are  students  of 
words :  we  are  shut  up  in  schools,  and  colleges,  and 
recitation-rooms,  for  ten  or  fifteen  years,  and  come 
out  at  last  with  a  bag  of  wind,  a  memory  of  words, 


NEW  ENGLAND  REFORMERS.  245 

and  do  not  know  a  thing.  We  cannot  use  our 
hands,  or  our  legs,  or  our  eyes,  or  our  arms. 
We  do  not  know  an  edible  root  in  the  woods,  we 
cannot  tell  our  course  by  the  stars,  nor  the  hour  of 
the  day  by  the  sun.  It  is  well  if  we  can  swim  and 
skate.  We  are  afraid  of  a  horse,  of  a  cow,  of  a 
dog,  of  a  snake,  of  a  spider.  The  Roman  rule  was 
to  teach  a  boy  nothing  that  he  could  not  learn 
standing.  The  old  English  rule  was,  '  All  summer 
in  the  field,  and  all  winter  in  the  study.'  And  it 
seems  as  if  a  man  should  learn  to  plant,  or  to  fish, 
or  to  hunt,  that  he  might  secure  his  subsistence  at 
all  events,  and  not  be  painful  to  his  friends  and 
fellow-men.  The  lessons  of  science  should  be  ex 
perimental  also.  The  sight  of  a  planet  through  a 
telescope  is  worth  all  the  course  on  astronomy ;  the 
shock  of  the  electric  spark  in  the  elbow,  outvalues 
all  the  theories  ;  the  taste  of  the  nitrous  oxide,  the 
firing  of  an  artificial  volcano,  are  better  than  vol 
umes  of  chemistry. 

One  of  the  traits  of  the  new  spirit  is  the  in 
quisition  it  fixed  on  our  scholastic  devotion  to  the 
dead  languages.  The  ancient  languages,  with  great 
beauty  of  structure,  contain  wonderful  remains  of 
genius,  which  draw,  and  always  will  draw,  certain 
likeminded  men, —  Greek  men,  and  Roman  men,  — 
in  all  countries,  to  their  study ;  but  by  a  wonderful 
drowsiness  of  usage  they  had  exacted  the  study  of 


246  NEW  ENGLAND  REFORMERS. 

all  men.  Once  (say  two  centuries  ago),  Latin  and 
Greek  had  a  strict  relation  to  all  the  science  and 
culture  there  was  in,  Europe,  and  the  Mathematics 
had  a  momentary  importance  at  some  era  of  activ 
ity  in  physical  science.  These  things  became  ste 
reotyped  as  education,  as  the  manner  of  men  is. 
But  the  Good  Spirit  never  cared  for  the  colleges, 
and  though  all  men  and  boys  were  now  drilled  in 
Latin,  Greek,  and  Mathematics,  it  had  quite  left 
these  shells  high  and  dry  on  the  beach,  and  was 
now  creating  and  feeding  other  matters  at  other 
ends  of  the  world.  But  in  a  hundred  high  schools 
and  colleges  this  warfare  against  common  sense 
still  goes  on.  Four,  or  six,  or  ten  years,  the  pupil 
is  parsing  Greek  and  Latin,  and  as  soon  as  he 
leaves  the  University,  as  it  is  ludicrously  styled,  he 
shuts  those  books  for  the  last  time.  Some  thou 
sands  of  young  men  are  graduated  at  our  colleges  in 
this  country  every  year,  and  the  persons  who,  at 
forty  years,  still  read  Greek,  can  all  be  counted  on 
your  hand.  I  never  met  with  ten.  Four  or  five 
persons  I  have  seen  who  read  Plato. 

But  is  not  this  absurd,  that  the  whole  liberal 
talent  of  this  country  should  be  directed  in  its  best 
years  on  studies  which  lead  to  nothing?  What 
was  the  consequence?  Some  intelligent  persons 
said  or  thought,  'Is  that  Greek  and  Latin  some 
spell  to  conjure  with,  and  not  words  of  reason  ?  If 


NEW  ENGLAND  REFORMERS.  247 

the  physician,  the  lawyer,  the  divine,  never  use  it 
to  come  at  their  ends,  I  need  never  learn  it  to  come 
at  mine.  Conjuring  is  gone  out  of  fashion,  and  I 
will  omit  this  conjugating,  and  go  straight  to  af 
fairs.'  So  they  jumped  the  Greek  and  Latin,  and 
read  law,  medicine,  or  sermons,  without  it.  To 
the  astonishment  of  all,  the  self-made  men  took 
even  ground  at  once  with  the  oldest  of  the  regular 
graduates,  and  in  a  few  months  the  most  conserva 
tive  circles  of  Boston  and  New  York  had  quite 
forgotten  who  of  their  gownsmen  was  college-bred, 
and  who  was  not. 

One  tendency  appears  alike  in  the  philosophical 
speculation  and  in  the  rudest  democratical  move 
ments,  through  all  the  petulance  and  all  the  puer 
ility,  the  wish,  namely,  to  cast  aside  the  superfluous 
and  arrive  at  short  methods ;  urged,  as  I  suppose, 
by  an  intuition  that  the  human  spirit  is  equal  to 
all  emergencies,  alone,  and  that  man  is  more  often 
injured  than  helped  by  the  means  he  uses. 

I  conceive  this  gradual  casting  off  of  material 
aids,  and  the  indication  of  growing  trust  in  the 
private  self-supplied  powers  of  the  individual,  to 
be  the  affirmative  principle  of  the  recent  philos 
ophy,  and  that  it  is  feeling  its  own  profound  truth 
and  is  reaching  forward  at  this  very  hour  to  the 
happiest  conclusions.  I  readily  concede  that  in 
this,  as  in  every  period  of  intellectual  activity^ 


248  NEW  ENGLAND  REFORMERS. 

there  has  been  a  noise  of  denial  and  protest ;  much 
was  to  be  resisted,  much  was  to  be  got  rid  of  by 
those  who  were  reared  in  the  old,  before  they  could 
begin  to  affirm  and  to  construct.  Many  a  reformer 
perishes  in  his  removal  of  rubbish ;  and  that  makes 
the  offensiveness  of  the  class.  They  are  partial; 
they  are  not  equal  to  the  work  they  pretend.  They 
lose  their  way ;  in  the  assault  on  the  kingdom  of 
darkness  they  expend  all  their  energy  on  some 
accidental  evil,  and  lose  their  sanity  and  power  of 
benefit.  It  is  of  little  moment  that  one  or  two  or 
twenty  errors  of  our  social  system  be  corrected,  but 
of  much  that  the  man  be  in  his  senses. 

The  criticism  and  attack  on  institutions,  which 
we  have  witnessed,  has  made  one  thing  plain,  that 
society  gains  nothing  whilst  a  man,  not  himself 
renovated,  attempts  to  renovate  things  around  him : 
he  has  become  tediously  good  in  some  particular 
but  negligent  or  narrow  in  the  rest ;  and  hypocrisy 
and  vanity  are  often  the  disgusting  result. 

It  is  handsomer  to  remain  in  the  establishment 
better  than  the  establishment,  and  conduct  that 
in  the  best  manner,  than  to  make  a  sally  against 
evil  by  some  single  improvement,  without  sup 
porting  it  by  a  total  regeneration.  Do  not  be  so 
vain  of  your  one  objection.  Do  you  think  there 
is  only  one  ?  Alas  !  my  good  friend,  there  is  no 
part  of  society  or  of  life  better  than  any  other 


NEW  ENGLAND  REFORMERS.  249 

part.  All  our  things  are  right  and  wrong  together. 
The  wave  of  evil  washes  all  our  institutions  alike., 
Do  you  complain  of  our  Marriage  ?  Our  marriage 
is  no  worse  than  our  education,  our  diet,  our  trade, 
our  social  customs.  Do  you  complain  of  the  laws 
of  Property  ?  It  is  a  pedantry  to  give  such  impor 
tance  to  them.  Can  we  not  play  the  game  of  life 
with  these  counters,  as  well  as  with  those  ?  in  the 
institution  of  property,  as  well  as  out  of  it  ?  Let 
into  it  the  new  and  renewing  principle  of  love,  and 
property  will  be  universality.  No  one  gives  the 
impression  of  superiority  to  the  institution,  which 
he  must  give  who  will  reform  it.  It  makes  no 
difference  what  you  say,  you  must  make  me  feel 
that  you  are  aloof  from  it ;  by  your  natural  and 
supernatural  advantages  do  easily  see  to  the  end 
of  it,  —  do  see  how  man  can  do  without  it.  Now 
all  men  are  on  one  side.  No  man  deserves  to  be 
heard  against  property.  Only  Love,  only  an  Idea, 
is  against  property  as  we  hold  it. 

I  cannot  afford  to  be  irritable  and  captious,  nor 
to  waste  all  my  time  in  attacks.  If  I  should  go 
out  of  church  whenever  I  hear  a  false  sentiment 
I  cotdd  never  stay  there  five  minutes.  But  why 
«ome  out  ?  the  street  is  as  false  as  the  church,  and 
when  I  get  to  my  house,  or  to  my  manners,  or 
to  my  speech,  I  have  not  got  away  from  the  lie. 
When  we  see  an  eager  assailant  of  one  of  these 


250  NEW  ENGLAND  REFORMERS. 

wrongs,  a  special  reformer,  we  feel  like  asking 
him,  What  right  have  you,  sir,  to  your  one  virtue  ? 
Is  virtue  piecemeal  ?  This  is  a  jewel  amidst  the 
rags  of  a  beggar. 

In  another  way  the  right  will  be  vindicated.  In 
the  midst  of  abuses,  in  the  heart  of  cities,  in  the 
aisles  of  false  churches,  alike  in  one  place  and  in 
another, —  wherever,  namely,  a  just  and  heroic  soul 
finds  itself,  there  it  will  do  what  is  next  at  hand, 
and  by  the  new  quality  of  character  it  shall  put 
forth  it  shall  abrogate  that  old  condition,  law  or 
school  in  which  it  stands,  before  the  law  of  its 
own  mind. 

If  partiality  was  one  fault  of  the  movement 
party,  the  other  defect  was  their  reliance  on  Asso 
ciation.  Doubts  such  as  those  I  have  intimated 
drove  many  good  persons  to  agitate  the  questions 
of  social  reform.  But  the  revolt  against  the  spirit 
of  commerce,  the  spirit  of  aristocracy,  and  the 
inveterate  abuses  of  cities,  did  not  appear  possible 
to  individuals ;  and  to  do  battle  against  numbers 
they  armed  themselves  with  numbers,  and  against 
concert  they  relied  on  new  concert. 

Following  or  advancing  beyond  the  ideas  of  St. 
Simon,  of  Fourier,  and  of  Owen,  three  communities 
have  already  been  formed  in  Massachusetts  on 
kindred  plans,  and  many  more  in  the  country  at 
large.  They  aim  to  give  every  member  a  share  in 


NEW  ENGLAND  REFORMERS.  251 

the  manual  labor,  to  give  an  equal  reward  to  labor 
and  to  talent,  and  to  unite  a  liberal  culture  with 
an  education  to  labor.  The  scheme  offers,  by  the 
economies  of  associated  labor  and  expense,  to  make 
every  member  rich,  on  the  same  amount  of  proper 
ty  that,  in  separate  families,  would  leave  every 
member  poor.  These  new  associations  are  com= 
posed  of  men  and  women  of  superior  talents  and 
sentiments  ;  yet  it  may  easily  be  questioned  wheth 
er  such  a  community  will  draw,  except  in  its  begin 
nings,  the  able  and  the  good  ;  whether  those  who 
have  energy  will  not  prefer  their  chance  of  superi 
ority  and  power  in  the  world,  to  the  humble  cer 
tainties  of  the  association ;  whether  such  a  retreat 
does  not  promise  to  become  an  asylum  to  those  who 
have  tried  and  failed,  rather  than  a  field  to  the 
strong  ;  and  whether  the  members  will  not  necessa 
rily  be  fractions  of  men,  because  each  finds  that  he 
cannot  enter  it  without  some  compromise.  Friend 
ship  and  association  are  very  fine  things,  and  a 
grand  phalanx  of  the  best  of  the  human  race,  band 
ed  for  some  catholic  object ;  yes,  excellent ;  but  re 
member  that  no  society  can  ever  be  so  large  as  one 
man.  He,  in  his  friendship,  in  his  natural  and  mo 
mentary  associations,  doubles  or  multiplies  himself ; 
but  in  the  hour  in  which  he  mortgages  himself  to 
two  or  ten  or  twenty,  h^  dwarfs  himself  below  the 
stature  of  one. 


252  NEW  ENGLAND  REFORMERS. 

But  the  men  of  less  faith  could  not  thus  believe, 
and  to  such,  concert  appears  the  sole  specific  of 
strength.  I  have  failed,  and  you  have  failed,  but 
perhaps  together  we  shall  not  fail.  Our  house 
keeping  is  not  satisfactory  to  us,  but  perhaps  a 
phalanx,  a  community,  might  be.  Many  of  us  have 
differed  in  opinion,  and  we  could  find  no  man  who 
could  make  the  truth  plain,  but  possibly  a  college, 
or  an  ecclesiastical  council,  might.  I  have  not  been 
able  either  to  persuade  my  brother  or  to  prevail 
on  myself  to  disuse  the  traffic  or  the  potation  of 
brandy,  but  perhaps  a  pledge  of  total  abstinence 
might  effectually  restrain  us.  The  candidate  my 
party  votes  for  is  not  to  be  trusted  with  a  dollar, 
but  he  will  be  honest  in  the  Senate,  for  we  can 
bring  public  opinion  to  bear  on  him.  Thus  concert 
was  the  specific  in  all  cases.  But  concert  is  neither 
better  nor  worse,  neither  more  nor  less  potent,  than 
individual  force.  All  the  men  in  the  world  cannot 
make  a  statue  walk  and  speak,  cannot  make  a  drop 
of  blood,  or  a  blade  of  grass,  any  more  than  one 
man  can.  But  let  there  be  one  man,  let  there  be 
truth  in  two  men,  in  ten  men,  then  is  concert  for 
the  first  time  possible  ;  because  the  force  which 
moves  the  world  is  a  new  quality,  and  can  never  be 
furnished  by  adding  whatever  quantities  of  a  differ 
ent  kind.  What  is  the  use  of  the  concert  of  the 
false  and  the  disunited  ?  There  can  be  no  concert 


NEW  ENGLAND  REFORMERS.  253 

in  two,  where  there  is  no  concert  in  one.  When 
the  individual  is  not  individual,  but  is  dual ;  when 
his  thoughts  look  one  way  and  his  actions  another  ; 
when  his  faith  is  traversed  by  his  habits ;  when  his 
will,  enlightened  by  reason,  is  warped  by  his  sense  5 
when  with  one  hand  he  rows  and  with  the  other 
backs  water,  what  concert  can  be  ? 

I  do  not  wonder  at  the  interest  these  projects  in 
spire.  The  world  is  awaking  to  the  idea  of  union, 
and  these  experiments  show  what  it  is  thinking  of. 
It  is  and  will  be  magic.  Men  will  live  and  com 
municate,  and  plough,  and  reap,  and  govern,  as  by 
added  ethereal  power,  when  once  they  are  united  ; 
as  in  a  celebrated  experiment,  by  expiration  and 
respiration  exactly  together,  four  persons  lift  a 
heavy  man  from  the  ground  by  the  little  finger 
only,  and  without  sense  of  weight.  But  this  union 
must  be  inward,  and  not  one  of  covenants,  and  is 
to  be  reached  by  a  reverse  of  the  methods  they 
use.  The  union  is  only  perfect  when  all  the  uniters 
are  isolated.  It  is  the  union  of  friends  who  live  in 
different  streets  or  towns.  Each  man,  if  he  attempts 
to  join  himself  to  others,  is  on  all  sides  cramped 
and  diminished  of  his  proportion  ;  and  the  stricter 
the  union  the  smaller  and  the  more  pitiful  he  is. 
But  leave  him  alone,  to  recognize  in  every  hour  and 
place  the  secret  soul ;  he  will  go  up  and  down  doing 
the  works  of  a  true  member,  and,  to  the  astonish* 


254  NEW  ENGLAND  REFORMERS. 

ment  of  all,  the  work  will  be  done  with  concert, 
though  no  man  spoke.  Government  will  be  ada 
mantine  without  any  governor.  The  union  must  be 
ideal  in  actual  individualism. 

I  pass  to  the  indication  in  some  particulars  of 
that  faith  in  man,  which  the  heart  is  preaching  to 
us  in  these  days,  and  which  engages  the  more  re 
gard,  from  the  consideration  that  the  speculations 
of  one  generation  are  the  history  of  the  next  fol 
lowing. 

In  alluding  just  now  to  our  system  of  education, 
I  spoke  of  the  deadness  of  its  details.  But  it  is 
open  to  graver  criticism  than  the  palsy  of  its  mem 
bers  :  it  is  a  system  of  despair.  The  disease  with 
which  the  human  mind  now  labors  is  want  of  faith. 
Men  do  not  believe  in  a  power  of  education.  We 
do  not  think  we  can  speak  to  divine  sentiments  in 
man,  and  we  do  not  try.  We  renounce  all  high 
aims.  We  believe  that  the  defects  of  so  many 
perverse  and  so  many  frivolous  people  who  make 
up  society,  are  organic,  and  society  is  a  hospital  of 
incurables.  A  man  of  good  sense  but  of  little  faith, 
whose  compassion  seemed  to  lead  him  to  church  as 
often  as  he  went  there,  said  to  me  that  "  he  liked 
to  have  concerts,  and  fairs,  and  churches,  and  other 
public  amusements  go  on."  I  am  afraid  the  re 
mark  is  too  honest,  and  comes  from  the  same  ori. 
gin  as  the  maxim  of  the  tyrant,  "  If  you  would  rule 


NEW  ENGLAND  REFORMERS.  255 

the  world  quietly,  you  must  keep  it  amused."  I 
notice  too  that  the  ground  on  which  eminent  public 
servants  urge  the  claims  of  popular  education  is 
fear  ;  4  This  country  is  filling  up  with  thousands 
and  millions  of  voters,  and  you  must  educate  them 
to  keep  them  from  our  throats.'  We  do  not  be 
lieve  that  any  education,  any  system  of  philosophy, 
any  influence  of  genius,  will  ever  give  depth  of  in 
sight  to  a  superficial  mind.  Having  settled  our 
selves  into  this  infidelity,  our  skill  is  expended  to 
procure  alleviations,  diversion,  opiates.  We  adorn 
the  victim  with  manual  skill,  his  tongue  with  lan 
guages,  his  body  with  inoffensive  and  comely  man 
ners.  So  have  we  cunningly  hid  the  tragedy  of 
limitation  and  inner  death  we  cannot  avert.  Is  it 
strange  that  society  should  be  devoured  by  a  secret 
melancholy  which  breaks  through  all  its  smiles  and 
all  its  gayety  and  games  ? 

But  even  one  step  farther  our  infidelity  has  gone. 
It  appears  that  some  doubt  is  felt  by  good  and  wise 
men  whether  really  the  happiness  and  probity  of 
men  is  increased  by  the  culture  of  the  mind  in  those 
disciplines  to  which  we  give  the  name  of  education. 
Unhappily  too  the  doubt  comes  from  scholars,  from 
persons  who  have  tried  these  methods.  In  their 
experience  the  scholar  was  not  raised  by  the  sa 
cred  thoughts  amongst  which  he  dwelt,  but  used 
them  to  selfish  ends.  He  was  a  profane  person, 


256  NEW  ENGLAND  REFORMERS. 

and  became  a  showman,  turning  his  gifts  to  a  mar 
ketable  use,  and  not  to  his  own  sustenance  and 
growth.  It  was  found  that  the  intellect  could  be 
independently  developed,  that  is,  in  separation  from 
the  man,  as  any  single  organ  can  be  invigorated, 
and  the  result  was  monstrous.  A  canine  appetite 
for  knowledge  was  generated,  which  must  still  be 
fed  but  was  never  satisfied,  and  this  knowledge,  not 
being  directed  on  action,  never  took  the  character 
of  substantial,  humane  truth,  blessing  those  whom 
it  entered.  It  gave  the  scholar  certain  powers  of 
expression,  the  power  of  speech,  the  power  of  po 
etry,  of  literary  art,  but  it  did  not  bring  him  to 
peace  or  to  beneficence. 

When  the  literary  class  betray  a  destitution  of 
faith,  it  is  not  strange  that  society  should  be  dis 
heartened  and  sensualized  by  unbelief.  What  rem 
edy  ?  Life  must  be  lived  on  a  higher  plane.  We 
must  go  up  to  a  higher  platform,  to  which  we  are 
always  invited  to  ascend ;  there,  the  whole  aspect 
of  things  changes.  I  resist  the  skepticism  of  our 
education  and  of  our  educated  men.  I  do  not  be 
lieve  that  the  differences  of  opinion  and  character 
in  men  are  organic.  I  do  not  recognize,  beside  the 
class  of  the  good  and  the  wise,  a  permanent  class 
of  skeptics,  or  a  class  of  conservatives,  or  of  malig- 
nants,  or  of  materialists.  I  do  not  believe  in  two 
classes.  You  remember  the  story  of  the  poor  wo< 


NEW  ENGLAND  REFORMERS.  257 

man  who  importuned  King  Philip  of  Macedon  to 
grant  her  justice,  which  Philip  refused  :  the  woman 
exclaimed,  "  I  appeal :  "  the  king,  astonished,  asked 
to  whom  she  appealed :  the  woman  replied,  "  From 
Philip  drunk  to  Philip  sober."  The  text  will  suit 
me  very  well.  I  believe  not  in  two  classes  of  men, 
but  in  man  in  two  moods,  in  Philip  drunk  and 
Philip  sober.  I  think,  according  to  the  good- 
hearted  word  of  Plato,  "Unwillingly  the  soul  is 
deprived  of  truth."  Iron  conservative,  miser,  or 
thief,  no  man  is  but  by  a  supposed  necessity  which 
he  tolerates  by  shortness  or  torpidity  of  sight.  The 
soul  lets  no  man  go  without  some  visitations  and 
holydays  of  a  diviner  presence.  It  would  be  easy 
to  show,  by  a  narrow  scanning  of  any  man's  biog 
raphy,  that  we  are  not  so  wedded  to  our  paltry  per 
formances  of  every  kind  but  that  every  man  has  at 
intervals  the  grace  to  scorn  his  performances,  in 
comparing  them  with  his  belief  of  what  he  should 
do  ;  —  that  he  puts  himself  on  the  side  of  his  ene 
mies,  listening  gladly  to  what  they  say  of  him,  and 
accusing  himself  of  the  same  things. 

What  is  it  men  love  in  Genius,  but  its  infinite 
hope,  which  degrades  all  it  has  done  ?  Genius 
counts  all  its  miracles  poor  and  short.  Its  own 
idea  it  never  executed.  The  Iliad,  the  Hamlet,  the 
Doric  column,  the  Roman  arch,  the  Gothic  minster, 
the  German  anthem,  when  they  are  ended,  the 

VOL.  III.  17 


258  NEW  ENGLAND  REFORMERS. 

master  casts  behind  him.  How  sinks  the  song  in 
the  waves  of  melody  which  the  universe  pours  over 
his  soul !  Before  that  gracious  Infinite  out  of  which 
he  drew  these  few  strokes,  how  mean  they  look, 
though  the  praises  of  the  world  attend  them.  From 
the  triumphs  of  his  art  he  turns  with  desire  to  this 
greater  defeat.  Let  those  admire  who  will.  With 
silent  joy  he  sees  himself  to  be  capable  of  a  beauty 
that  eclipses  all  which  his  hands  have  done ;  all 
which  human  hands  have  ever  done. 

Well,  we  are  all  the  children  of  genius,  the  chil 
dren  of  virtue,  —  and  feel  their  inspirations  in  our 
happier  hours.  Is  not  every  man  sometimes  a  rad 
ical  in  politics  ?  Men  are  conservatives  when  they 
are  least  vigorous,  or  when  they  are  most  luxurious. 
They  are  conservatives  after  dinner,  or  before  tak 
ing  their  rest ;  when  they  are  sick,  or  aged  :  in  the 
morning,  or  when  their  intellect  or  their  conscience 
has  been  aroused ;  when  they  hear  music,  or  when 
they  read  poetry,  they  are  radicals.  In  the  circle 
of  the  rankest  tories  that  could  be  collected  in  Eng 
land,  Old  or  New,  let  a  powerful  and  stimulating 
intellect,  a  man  of  great  heart  and  mind  act  on 
them,  and  very  quickly  these  frozen  conservators 
will  yield  to  the  friendly  influence,  these  hopeless 
will  begin  to  hope,  these  haters  will  begin  to  love, 
these  immovable  statues  will  begin  to  spin  and  re* 
volve.  I  cannot  help  recalling  the  fine  anecdotr 


NEW  ENGLAND  REFORMERS.  259 

which  "Warton  relates  of  Bishop  Berkeley,  when  he 
was  preparing  to  leave  England  with  his  plan  of 
plan  ting  the  gospel  among  "the  American  savages. 
"  Lord  Bathurst  told  me  that  the  members  of  the 
Scriblerus  club  being  met  at  his  house  at  dinner, 
they  agreed  to  rally  Berkeley,  who  was  also  his 
guest,  on  his  scheme  at  Bermudas.  Berkeley,  hav 
ing  listened  to  the  many  lively  things  they  had  to 
say,  begged  to  be  heard  in  his  turn,  and  displayed 
his  plan  with  such  an  astonishing  and  animating 
force  of  eloquence  and  enthusiasm  that  they  were 
struck  dumb,  and,  after  some  pause,  rose  up  all  to 
gether  with  earnestness,  exclaiming,  '  Let  us  set  out 
with  him  immediately.'  "  Men  in  all  ways  are  bet 
ter  than  they  seem.  They  like  flattery  for  the  mo 
ment,  but  they  know  the  truth  for  their  own.  It  is 
a  foolish  cowardice  which  keeps  us  from  trusting 
them  and  speaking  to  them  rude  truth.  They  re 
sent  your  honesty  for  an  instant,  they  will  thank 
you  for  it  always.  What  is  it  we  heartily  wish  of 
each  other  ?  Is  it  to  be  pleased  and  flattered  ?  No, 
but  to  be  convicted  and  exposed,  to  be  shamed  out 
of  our  nonsense  of  all  kinds,  and  made  men  of,  in 
stead  of  ghosts  and  phantoms.  We  are  weary  of 
gliding  ghostlike  through  the  world,  which  is  itself 
so  slight  and  unreal.  We  crave  a  sense  of  reality, 
though  it  come  in  strokes  of  pain.  I  explain  so,  — 
by  this  manlike  love  of  truth,  —  those  excesses  and 


260  NEW  ENGLAND  REFORMERS. 

errors  into  which  souls  of  great  vigor,  but  not  equal 
insight,  often  fall.  They  feel  the  poverty  at  the 
bottom  of  all  the  seeming  affluence  of  the  world. 
They  know  the  speed  with  which  they  come  straight 
through  the  thin  masquerade,  and  conceive  a  dis 
gust  at  the  indigence  of  nature  :  Rousseau,  Mira- 
beau,  Charles  Fox,  Napoleon,  Byron,  —  and  I  could 
easily  add  names  nearer  home,  of  raging  riders,  who 
drive  their  steeds  so  hard,  in  the  violence  of  living 
to  forget  its  illusion :  they  would  know  the  worst, 
and  tread  the  floors  of  hell.  The  heroes  of  ancient 
and  modern  fame,  Cimon,  Themistocles,  Alcibiades, 
Alexander,  Csesar,  have  treated  life  and  fortune  as 
a  game  to  be  well  and  skilfully  played,  but  the 
stake  not  to  be  so  valued  but  that  any  time  it  could 
be  held  as  a  trifle  light  as  air,  and  thrown  up. 
Ca3sar,  just  before  the  battle  of  Pharsalia,  dis 
courses  with  the  Egyptian  priest  concerning  the 
fountains  of  the  Nile,  and  offers  to  quit  the  army, 
the  empire,  and  Cleopatra,  if  he  will  show  him 
those  mysterious  sources. 

The  same  magnanimity  shows  itself  in  our  social 
relations,  in  the  preference,  namely,  which  each 
man  gives  to  the  society  of  superiors  over  that  of 
his  equals.  All  that  a  man  has  will  he  give  for 
right  relations  with  his  mates.  All  that  he  has 
will  he  give  for  an  erect  demeanor  in  every  com 
pany  and  on  each  occasion.  He  aims  at  such 


NEW  ENGLAND  REFORMERS.  261 

things  as  his  neighbors  prize,  and  gives  his  days 
and  nights,  his  talents  and  his  heart,  to  strike  a 
good  stroke,  to  acquit  himself  in  all  men's  sight  as 
a  man.  The  consideration  of  an  eminent  citizen, 
of  a  noted  merchant,  of  a  man  of  mark  in  his  pro 
fession  ;  a  naval  and  military  honor,  a  general's 
commission,  a  marshal's  baton,  a  ducal  coronet,  the 
laurel  of  poets,  and,  anyhow  procured,  the  acknowl 
edgment  of  eminent  merit,  —  have  this  lustre  for 
each  candidate  that  they  enable  him  to  walk  erect 
and  unashamed  in  the  presence  of  some  persons  be 
fore  whom  he  felt  himself  inferior.  Having  raised 
himself  to  this  rank,  having  established  his  equal 
ity  with  class  after  class  of  those  with  whom  he 
would  live  well,  he  still  finds  certain  others  be 
fore  whom  he  cannot  possess  himself,  because  they 
have  somewhat  fairer,  somewhat  grander,  somewhat 
purer,  which  extorts  homage  of  him.  Is  his  ambi 
tion  pure  ?  then  will  his  laurels  and  his  possessions 
seem  worthless :  instead  of  avoiding  these  men  who 
make  his  fine  gold  dim,  he  will  cast  all  behind  him 
and  seek  their  society  only,  woo  and  embrace  this 
his  humiliation  and  mortification,  until  he  shall 
know  why  his  eye  sinks,  his  voice  is  husky,  and  his 
brilliant  talents  are  paralyzed  in  this  presence.  He 
is  sure  that  the  soul  which  gives  the  lie  to  all 
things  will  tell  none.  His  constitution  will  not 
mislead  him.  If  it  cannot  carry  itself  as  it  ought, 


262  NEW  ENGLAND  REFORMERS. 

high  and  unmatchable  in  the  presence  of  any  man ; 
if  the  secret  oracles  whose  whisper  makes  the  sweet 
ness  and  dignity  of  his  life  do  here  withdraw  and 
accompany  him  no  longer,  —  it  is  time  to  under 
value  what  he  has  valued,  to  dispossess  himself  of 
what  he  has  acquired,  and  with  Caesar  to  take  in 
his  hand  the  army,  the  empire,  and  Cleopatra,  and 
say,  "  All  these  will  I  relinquish,  if  you  will  show 
me  the  fountains  of  the  Nile."  Dear  to  us  are 
those  who  love  us  ;  the  swift  moments  we  spend 
with  them  are  a  compensation  for  a  great  deal  of 
misery ;  they  enlarge  our  life  ;  —  but  dearer  are 
those  who  reject  us  as  unworthy,  for  they  add  an 
other  life  :  they  build  a  heaven  before  us  whereof 
we  had  not  dreamed,  and  thereby  supply  to  us  new 
powers  out  of  the  recesses  of  the  spirit,  and  urge  us 
to  new  and  unattempted  performances. 

As  every  man  at  heart  wishes  the  best  and  not 
inferior  society,  wishes  to  be  convicted  of  his  error 
and  to  come  to  himself, —  so  he  wishes  that  the  same 
healing  should  not  stop  in  his  thought,  but  should 
penetrate  his  will  or  active  power.  The  selfish 
man  suffers  more  from  his  selfishness  than  he  from 
whom  that  selfishness  withholds  some  important 
benefit.  What  he  most  wishes  is  to  be  lifted  to 
some  higher  platform,  that  he  may  see  beyond  his 
present  fear  the  transalpine  good,  so  that  his  fear, 
his  coldness,  his  custom  may  be  broken  up  like 


NEW  ENGLAND  REFORMERS.  263 

fragments  of  ice,  melted  and  carried  away  in  the 
great  stream  of  good  will.  Do  you  ask  my  aid  ? 
I  also  wish  to  be  a  benefactor.  I  wish  more  to  be 
a  benefactor  and  servant  than  you  wish  to  be 
served  by  me ;  and  surely  the  greatest  good  fortune 
that  could  befall  me  is  precisely  to  be  so  moved  by 
you  that  I  should  say,  '  Take  me  and  all  mine,  and 
use  me  and  mine  freely  to  your  ends  ! '  for  I  could 
not  say  it  otherwise  than  because  a  great  enlarge^ 
ment  had  come  to  my  heart  and  mind,  which  made 
me  superior  to  my  fortunes.  Here  we  are  para- 
lyzed  with  fear ;  we  hold  on  to  our  little  properties^ 
house  and  land,  office  and  money,  for  the  bread 
which  they  have  in  our  experience  yielded  us,  al 
though  we  confess  that  our  being  does  not  flow 
through  them.  We  desire  to  be  made  great ;  we 
desire  to  be  touched  with  that  fire  which  shall  com 
mand  this  ice  to  stream,  and  make  our  existence  a 
benefit.  If  therefore  we  start  objections  to  your 
project,  O  friend  of  the  slave,  or  friend  of  the  poor 
or  of  the  race,  understand  well  that  it  is  because 
we  wish  to  drive  you  to  drive  us  into  your  meas 
ures.  We  wish  to  hear  ourselves  confuted.  We 
are  haunted  with  a  belief  that  you  have  a  secret 
which  it  would  highliest  advantage  us  to  learn, 'and 
we  would  force  you  to  impart  it  to  us,  though  it 
should  bring  us  to  prison  or  to  worse  extremity. 
Nothing  shall  warp  me  from  the  belief  that  every 


264  NEW  ENGLAND  REFORMERS. 

man  is  a  lover  of  truth.  There  is  no  pure  lie,  no 
pure  malignity  in  nature.  The  entertainment  of 
the  proposition  of  depravity  is  the  last  profligacy 
and  profanation.  There  is  no  skepticism,  no  athe 
ism  but  that.  Could  it  be  received  into  common 
belief,  suicide  would  unpeople  the  planet.  It  has 
had  a  name  to  live  in  some  dogmatic  theology,  but 
each  man's  innocence  and  his  real  liking  of  his 
neighbor  have  kept  it  a  dead  letter.  I  remember 
standing  at  the  polls  one  day  when  the  anger  of 
the  political  contest  gave  a  certain  grimness  to  the 
faces  of  the  independent  electors,  and  a  good  man 
at  my  side,  looking  on  the  people,  remarked,  "  I  am 
satisfied  that  the  largest  part  of  these  men,  on  ei 
ther  side,  mean  to  vote  right."  I  suppose  consider 
ate  observers,  looking  at  the  masses  of  men  in  their 
blameless  and  in  their  equivocal  actions,  will  assent, 
that  in  spite  of  selfishness  and  frivolity,  the  gen 
eral  purpose  in  the  great  number  of  persons  is  fidel 
ity.  The  reason  why  any  one  refuses  his  assent  to 
your  opinion,  or  his  aid  to  your  benevolent  design, 
is  in  you :  he  refuses  to  accept  you  as  a  bringer  of 
truth,  because  though  you  think  you  have  it,  he 
feels  that  you  have  it  not.  You  have  not  given  him 
the  authentic  sign. 

If  it  were  worth  while  to  run  into  details  this 
general  doctrine  of  the  latent  but  ever  soliciting 
Spirit,  it  would  be  easy  to  adduce  illustration  in 


NEW  ENGLAND  REFORMERS.  265 

particulars  of  a  man's  equality  to  the  Church,  of 
his  equality  to  the  State,  and  of  his  equality  to 
every  other  man.  It  is  yet  in  all  men's  memory 
that,  a  few  years  ago,  the  liberal  churches  com 
plained  that  the  Calvinistic  church  denied  to  them 
the  name  of  Christian.  I  think  the  complaint  was 
confession  :  a  religious  church  would  not  complain. 
A  religious  man,  like  Behmen,  Fox,  or  Sweden- 
borg  is  not  irritated  by  wanting  the  sanction  of  the 
Church,  but  the  Church  feels  the  accusation  of  his 
presence  and  belief. 

It  only  needs  that  a  just  man  should  walk  in  our 
streets  to  make  it  appear  how  pitiful  and  inarti 
ficial  a  contrivance  is  our  legislation.  The  man 
whose  part  is  taken  and  who  does  not  wait  for 
society  in  anything,  has  a  power  which  society  can 
not  choose  but  feel.  The  familiar  experiment  called 
the  hydrostatic  paradox,  in  which  a  capillary  col 
umn  of  water  balances  the  ocean,  is  a  symbol  of  the 
relation  of  one  man  to  the  whole  family  of  men. 
The  wise  Dandamis,  on  hearing  the  lives  of  Soc 
rates,  Pythagoras  and  Diogenes  read,  "  judged 
them  to  be  great  men  every  way,  excepting  that 
they  were  too  much  subjected  to  the  reverence  of 
the  laws,  which  to  second  and  authorize,  true  vir 
tue  must  abate  very  much  of  its  original  vigor." 

And  as  a  man  is  equal  to  the  Church  and  equal 
to  the  State,  so  he  is  equal  to  every  other  man. 


266  NEW  ENGLAND  REFORMERS. 

The  disparities  of  power  in  men  are  superficial; 
and  all  frank  and  searching  conversation,  in  which 
a  man  lays  himself  open  to  his  brother,  apprises 
each  of  their  radical  unity.  When  two  persons  sit 
and  converse  in  a  thoroughly  good  understanding, 
the  remark  is  sure  to  be  made,  See  how  we  have 
disputed  about  words !  Let  a  clear,  apprehensive 
mind,  such  as  every  man  knows  among  his  friends, 
converse  with  the  most  commanding  poetic  genius, 
I  think  it  would  appear  that  there  was  no  inequal 
ity  such  as  men  fancy,  between  them ;  that  a  per 
fect  understanding,  a  like  receiving,  a  like  perceiv 
ing,  abolished  differences  ;  and  the  poet  would  con 
fess  that  his  creative  imagination  gave  him  no  deep 
advantage,  but  only  the  superficial  one  that  he 
could  express  himself  and  the  other  could  not ;  that 
his  advantage  was  a  knack,  which  might  impose  on 
indolent  men  but  could  not  impose  on  lovers  of 
truth;  for  they  know  the  tax  of  talent,  or  what  a 
price  of  greatness  the  power  of  expression  too  often 
pays.  I  believe  it  is  the  conviction  of  the  purest 
men  that  the  net  amount  of  man  and  man  does  not 
much  vary.  Each  is  incomparably  superior  to  his 
companion  in  some  faculty.  His  want  of  skill  in 
other  directions  has  added  to  his  fitness  for  his  own 
work.  Each  seems  to  have  some  compensation 
yielded  to  him  by  his  infirmity,  and  every  hinder- 
ance  operates  as  a  concentration  of  his  force. 


NEW  ENGLAND  REFORMERS.  267 

These  and  the  like  experiences  intimate  that 
man  stands  in  strict  connection  with  a  higher  fact 
never  yet  manifested.  There  is  power  over  and 
behind  us,  and  we  are  the  channels  of  its  commu 
nications.  We  seek  to  say  thus  and  so,  and  over 
our  head  some  spirit  sits  which  contradicts  what 
we  say.  We  would  persuade  our  fellow  to  this 
or  that ;  another  self  within  our  eyes  dissuades 
him.  That  which  we  keep  back,  this  reveals.  In 
vain  we  compose  our  faces  and  our  words  ;  it  holds 
uncontrollable  communication  with  the  enemy,  and 
he  answers  civilly  to  us,  but  believes  the  spirit. 
We  exclaim,  '  There  's  a  traitor  in  the  house  !  '  but 
at  last  it  appears  that  he  is  the  true  man,  and  I  am 
the  traitor.  This  open  channel  to  the  highest  life 
is  the  first  and  last  reality,  so  subtle,  so  quiet,  yet 
so  tenacious,  that  although  I  have  never  expressed 
the  truth,  and  although  I  have  never  heard  the 
expression  of  it  from  any  other,  I  know  that  the 
whole  truth  is  here  for  me.  What  if  I  cannot 
answer  your  questions  ?  I  am  not  pained  that  I 
cannot  frame  a  reply  to  the  question,  What  is  the 
operation  we  call  Providence  ?  There  lies  the  un 
spoken  thing,  present,  omnipresent.  Every  time 
we  converse  we  seek  to  translate  it  into  speech, 
but  whether  we  hit  or  whether  we  miss,  we  have 
the  fact.  Every  discourse  is  an  approximate  an 
swer  :  but  it  is  of  small  consequence  that  we  do 


268  NEW  ENGLAND  REFORMERS. 

not  get  it  into  verbs  and  nouns,  whilst  it  abides 
for  contemplation  forever. 

If  the  auguries  of  the  prophesying  heart  shall 
make  themselves  good  in  time,  the  man  who  shall 
be  born,  whose  advent  men  and  events  prepare  and 
foreshow,  is  one  who  shall  enjoy  his  connection 
with  a  higher  life,  with  the  man  within  man :  shall 
destroy  distrust  by  his  trust,  shall  use  his  native 
but  forgotten  methods,  shall  not  take  counsel  of 
flesh  and  blood,  but  shall  rely  on  the  Law  alive 
and  beautiful  which  works  over  our  heads  and 
under  our  feet.  Pitiless,  it  avails  itself  of  our  sue- 
cess  when  we  obey  it,  and  of  our  ruin  when  we 
contravene  it.  Men  are  all  secret  believers  in  it, 
else  the  word  justice  would  have  no  meaning  :  they 
believe  that  the  best  is  the  true  ;  that  right  is  done 
at  last ;  or  chaos  would  come.  It  rewards  actions 
after  their  nature,  and  not  after  the  design  of  the 
agent.  '  Work,'  it  saith  to  man,  '  in  every  hour, 
paid  or  unpaid,  see  only  that  thou  work,  and  thou 
canst  not  escape  the  reward :  whether  thy  work  be 
fine  or  coarse,  planting  corn  or  writing  epics,  so 
only  it  be  honest  work,  done  to  thine  own  appro 
bation,  it  shall  earn  a  reward  to  the  senses  as  well 
as  to  the  thought :  no  matter  how  often  defeated, 
you  are  born  to  victory.  The  reward  of  a  thing 
wrell  done,  is  to  have  done  it.' 

As  soon  as  a  man  is  wonted   to  look   beyond 


NEW  ENGLAND  REFORMERS.  269 

surfaces,  and  to  see  how  this  high  will  prevails 
without  an  exception  or  an  interval,  he  settles  him 
self  into  serenity.  He  can  already  rely  on  the  laws 
of  gravity,  that  every  stone  will  fall  where  it  is 
due ;  the  good  globe  is  faithful,  and  carries  us 
securely  through  the  celestial  spaces,  anxious  or 
resigned,  we  need  not  interfere  to  help  it  on  :  and 
he  will  learn  one  day  the  mild  lesson  they  teach, 
that  our  own  orbit  is  all  our  task,  and  we  need  not 
assist  the  administration  of  the  universe.  Do  not 
be  so  impatient  to  set  the  town  right  concerning 
the  unfounded  pretensions  and  the  false  reputation 
of  certain  men  of  standing.  They  are  laboring 
harder  to  set  the  town  right  concerning  themselves, 
and  will  certainly  succeed.  Suppress  for  a  few 
days  your  criticism  on  the  insufficiency  of  this  or 
that  teacher  or  experimenter,  and  he  will  havre 
demonstrated  his  insufficiency  to  all  men's  eyes. 
In  like  manner,  let  a  man  fall  into  the  divine  cir 
cuits,  and  he  is  enlarged.  Obedience  to  his  genius 
is  the  only  liberating  influence.  We  wish  to  escape 
from  subjection  and  a  sense  of  inferiority,  and  we 
make  self-denying  ordinances,  we  drink  water,  we 
eat  grass,  we  refuse  the  laws,  we  go  to  jail :  it  is 
all  in  vain  ;  only  by  obedience  to  his  genius,  only 
by  the  freest  activity  in  the  way  constitutional  to 
him,  does  an  angel  seem  to  arise  before  a  man  and 
lead  him  by  the  hand  out  of  all  the  wards  of  the 
prison. 


270  NEW  ENGLAND  REFORMERS. 

That  which  befits  us,  embosomed  in  beauty  and 
wonder  as  we  are,  is  cheerfulness  and  courage,  and 
the  endeavor  to  realize  our  aspirations.  The  life 
of  man  is  the  true  romance,  which  when  it  is  val 
iantly  conducted  will  yield  the  imagination  a  higher 
joy  than  any  fiction.  All  around  us  what  powers 
are  wrapped  up  under  the  coarse  mattings  of  cus 
tom,  and  all  wonder  prevented.  It  is  so  wonderful 
to  our  neurologists  that  a  man  can  see  without  his 
eyes,  that  it  does  not  occur  to  thern  that  it  is  just 
as  wonderful  that  he  should  see  with  them ;  and 
that  is  ever  the  difference  between  the  wise  and  the 
unwise  :  the  latter  wonders  at  what  is  unusual,  the 
wise  man  wonders  at  the  usual.  Shall  not  the 
heart  which  has  received  so  much,  trust  the  Power 
by  which  it  lives  ?  May  it  not  quit  other  leadings, 
and  listen  to  the  Soul  that  has  guided  it  so  gently 
and  taught  it  so  much,  secure  that  the  future  will 
be  worthy  of  the  past  ? 


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